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http://www.archive.org/details/waltwhitmanmanhiOObaza 



WALT WHITMAN 

THE MAN AND HIS WORK 



WALT WHITMAN 

THE MAN AND HIS WORK 



BY 
LEON BAZALGETTE 



Translated from the French 
by Ellen. FitzGerald 

Department of English, Chicago 
Normal College 




Garden City New York 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

1920 






COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY 

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OP 

TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, 

INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN 



FEB -5 !920 



©CI.A559684 



TO THE MEMORY OF 
MY FATHER 

BEST TYPE OF THE COMMON AVERAGE FOR 
WHOSE STORIES OF THE WAR AND OF 
LINCOLN I DEDICATE THIS TRIBUTE TO 
THE POET OF THE WAR AND OF LINCOLN 



o 









PREFACE 

M. Bazalgette's introduction, so expressive of the deep 
feeling which inspired him to build a French dwelling for 
Whitman, explains why this elaborate structure should be- 
come our own. To advance a taste of a personality is the 
main purpose of M. Bazalgette's biography and he surely 
succeeds. This enthusiastic rendering of Whitman's life 
into a complete dramatic unit, its lights and shades fully 
balanced, suggests that Whitman, in our neglect of him 
as a poet, may have been lucky after all; for here he tran- 
scends the mere bounds of a literary figure, and becomes a 
complete national asset, the man in whom was incarnated 
the whole life of America. So thoroughly does M. Bazal- 
gette create a superman for us that Whitman becomes as 
impressive as Milton to Blake and the reader is tempted to 
paraphrase Blake's beautiful exclamation: 

And did this man really dwell among us? 

Whitman has never lacked devoted biographers in his own 
country, and by this free ample use of their work M. Bazal- 
gette may raise the question of his sharp emphasis on Ameri- 
can neglect of him. Admitting that Whitman is a negligible 
force with the American masses, as compared with Long- 
fellow and Whittier, whose saintlike faces bless every Ameri- 
can child at his school tasks, whose verse is as familiar as the 
portraits, Whitman himself is responsible, much more than 
the American people. 

There is a profound paradox in this whole issue between 



viii PREFACE 

Whitman and the people he exalted. They could but in- 
terpret him according to their light. They had been used 
to literary expression from men of simple lives and Whitman 
inaugurated very unprofessional literature in a very pro- 
fessional way. 

A poet who announces himself as: 

Turbulent, fleshy, sensual eating, drinking and breeding, 

is only one with Hamlet and several other characters in Shake- 
speare who were really trying to make their world better. 
Trained readers know how to value such confessions but the 
average man takes these literary conventions seriously, and 
hence misses the really great message of the poet. For this 
reason I have felt justified in abridging M. Bazalgette's treat- 
ment of the New Orleans episode, not that it may not be 
true but that it is a mystery which neither H. B. Binns 
nor he can clear by elaborate guess work; I have also as 
much as is consistent with the unity of the book lightened 
his emphasis on the Leaves of Grass conflict. Again the 
people were led by their normal light. They had always 
known that Democracy was good and America great. 
What they were unprepared for was that a subject pro- 
foundly moral like sex should be made merely objective 
and scientific. Again only the trained in art know that 
the nude is beautiful. 

But M. Bazalgette's biography may do much toward a 
right reading of Whitman, for the whole of his work is 
part by part built into this firm structure and needs to be 
read and reread now if ever. That much neglected piece 
Primer for Americans 1 has its real place. It might well have 
been the foundation of Mr. Mencken's The American 
Language. Specimen Days and Drum Taps and the whole of 
Whitman's relation to the war and his interpretation of all 
war may force upon the American people the thought that 
if Whitman cannot be with Longfellow and Whittier, he 

'It appeared for the first time in the Atlantic Monthly, 1904. 



PREFACE ix 

can be with Grant and Lincoln, as forces in our history. 
Had M. Bazalgette written his biography in 1919, or had 
someone else felt that a new interpretation of Whitman is 
needed, not because it is his centenary year but because the 
world is little better than chaos for the want of his great 
philosophy, I feel sure that the interpretation of Whitman 
would be first political, and that all that he wrote is subordi- 
nate to this. History has proved Whitman true. His centrip- 
etal personality, his poetical conception of science, his ex- 
periments in verse are each and all less than that in war or 
peace, or, at the council table his mystical conception of man 
and institutions is the only politics to live by. Whitman is 
the greatest romantic because he wrote a new Contrat Social: 
America as he conceived it is the great romance. Whether 
or not he was aware of it, the long foreground Emerson 
spoke of included the best French philosophy from Ros- 
seau, and Blake's glorious idea of America as another por- 
tion of the infinite. These have been the two motives in 
offering this biography as a centenary tribute. Not the 
least of M. Bazalgette's praise of Whitman is Whitman's 
power to recreate the soul. Surely it came from his prophet 
power to dream of things to come. Now more than ever 
this soiled world needs his faith; now more than ever Amer- 
ica must make his faith her own: 

And thou America, 

For the scheme's culmination, its thought and its reality, 

For these (not for thyself) thou hast arrived. 

Thou too surroundest all, 

Embracing carrying welcoming all, thou too by pathways broad and new, 

To the ideal tendest. . . . 

Is it a dream? 

Nay but the lack of it the dream, 

And failing it life's lore and wealth a dream, 

And all the world a dream. 

E. F. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Preface vii 

Author's Introduction xv 



PART ONE 
ORIGIN AND YOUTH 

Long Island (1819-1841) 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Birthplace and Ancestors ..... 3 

II. West Hills Farm 19 

III. Years of Youth and Apprenticeship . . 29 



PART TWO 
THE MULTITUDINARY LIFE 

New York (1841-1855) 

IV. Literary Beginnings 45 

V. The Man of Crowds 54 

VI. To the South and to the Love of Woman 72 

VII,>*Walt Whitman, a Cosmos" .... 91 



xii TABLE OF CONTENTS 

PART THREE 
"LEAVES OF GRASS" 

Brooklyn (1855-1862) 

CHAPTEB PAGE 

VIII. The Great Design 115 

IX. The First Song 131 

X. Walt Insulted 141 

XI. Emerson and Whitman 152 

PART FOUR 
THE WOUND DRESSER 

Washington (1862-1865) 

XII. At the Bedside of the Dying . . . 171 

XIII. The Wound 179 

XIV. The Comrade Heart 186 

XV. Hymns of the War and of Lincoln. . 193 

XVI. O'Connor's Lash 202 

PART FIVE 
THE GOOD GRAY POET 

Washington (1865-1873) 

XVII. The Great Companions; Peter Doyle, 

the Conductor 209 

XVIII. First Victory of "Leaves of Grass" 222 

XIX. The Stricken Oak 234 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



xm 



CHAPTER 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 
XXIII. 
XXIV. 



PART SIX 
THE INVALID 

Camden (1873-1884) 

PAGE 

Through Abandonment and Sorrow. . 247 

The Nature Bath 260 

Across the Continent 265 

Another Persecution 271 

Dawn of Glory 279 



PART SEVEN 
THE SAGE OF CAMDEN 

Camden (1884-1888) 

XXV. The Invalid at Home 289 

XXVI. The Soul of Walt 294 

XXVII. Days in the Cottage 304 



XXVIII. 

XXIX. 
XXX. 

XXXI. 
XXXII. 



PART EIGHT 

THE SETTING SUN 

Camden (1888-1892) 

A New Assault Foiled 313 

Meditation at Twilight 325 

Hour of Apotheosis 334 

The Deliverance 344 

A Pagan Funeral 349 



AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION 

. . . . But I do not undertake to define you, 

hardly to understand you, 
I do at this moment but name you, 

prophecy you, 
I do only proclaim you ! 

The America which dreams and sings, back of the one 
which works and invents, has given the world four universal 
geniuses: Poe, Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman. However 
great her other poets and thinkers may be, they have, after 
all, but a national significance and do not so deeply touch 
the heart of humanity. And among these four figures, one 
of them more and more dominates the group: it is Walt 
Whitman. 

Poet, seer, one hesitates to define him. He is both and 
much more besides. Through him a whole continent is sud- 
denly an exultant voice. In listening to him, one seems to 
hear some huge rough rhapsodist from the antique world 
who had passed over America to confess the desires, the 
marvels, and the faith of the Modern Man, — the Vedic 
hymns of our age, fresh, rich, multiple. They thrill with the 
birth of an era. 

So ample are his proportions that America, aside from a 
handful of followers, has never known his supreme signifi- 
cance. She ignores him. Little it matters perhaps! She 
has plenty of time to know him, when, at the seventh day, 
she rests from her labours. And he has plenty of time to wait. 
Has he not said somewhere, thinking of his own case: "The 
proof of the merit of a poet may be strictly deferred to the 
day when his country shall have absorbed him as lovingly 
as he absorbed his country." 



xvi AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION 

In awaiting that time the world is about to offer to Walt 
Whitman another testimony. The conviction of some fine 
minds, expressed in many languages, is that he should be 
considered indisputably not only as the first of American 
poets, but as the most powerful poet and the most modern of 
the whole nineteenth century. A conviction at which one 
may smile "a priori"; it grows nevertheless from day to 
day. 

Many, who do not share this, may avow that there is no 
one in modern times so wonderfully vast. His verse has to 
an astonishing degree the quality which only a dozen sover- 
eign geniuses before him possessed: that of speaking to the 
whole world. They answer, stronger than any other 
voice the aspiration, the needs, the fervour, everything be- 
longing to a young humanity, everything directed to the 
future. His work is big with revelation as decisive for 
Europeans as for Americans. These may try in vain to ap- 
propriate Walt Whitman; he escapes them; passes all fron- 
tiers, and speaks to all the people of earth. 

It is not the purpose here to present an "exotic," but to 
remove the barrier which denies us a living source of beauty 
and of love at which generations may be refreshed. In a 
way, Walt Whitman is much closer to us than if he were of 
our blood. He does not emerge from the shades of time or 
the fogs of space, like some imposing figure, all solitary and 
afar. He is a big elder Brother who clears our way after 
having breathed our atmosphere, travelled our roads, ex- 
perienced our appetites, ruminated our thoughts. We 
would wrong him less in ignoring him than in transforming 
him into a poetical curiosity. The reader may easily see 
that this work has not been for me a mere literary enter- 
prise: something very different indeed. It is the fruit of a 
communion with his work, his character, so close and fervent 
that I seem to have lived for years near him. One must not 
be surprised then to meet here traces of my personal feeling 
toward both. If I have succeeded in understanding, and 






AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION xvii 

making understood (of that I am not very sure), this 
individuality of a new type it is only by having loved him so 
much. Whatever emotion of beauty or humanity the future 
may hold for me, I feel indeed that this prolonged contact 
with such a revealer will remain the great impression of my 
life. 

In France, Walt Whitman for twenty -five years has roused, 
among those able to read him in the original, a small number 
of vivid admirers. Though it is not rare to-day to see his 
name cited, he still remains unknown to the public. Since 
this ignorance is bound to disappear some day, is it not 
better to introduce him whole in his work and his life than 
by fragments and sketches? At least this method has 
seemed to me surer and more in keeping with his importance. 
Hence this volume, dedicated to the man, and conceived as 
a kind of introduction to the reading of Leaves of Grass. 
It goes without saying that these pages have no interest, 
if they have any, except in relation to that great Book: it is 
that especially which has to be explored to understand him 
who built it. 

I am not unmindful of any in this country who have hon- 
oured Walt Whitman and I honour them in turn, at the be- 
ginning of this work. To the name of Gabriel Sarrazin shall 
always be linked the honour of having first saluted Whitman 
amply and magnificently and of having sounded his depths. 
Precious to me is the encouragement which I have received 
since the idea possessed me of building, to the measure of 
my strength, a French dwelling for the American bard. 
What I owe to my predecessors, to the biographers of Walt 
Whitman, to his friends who published their memoirs, and 
especially to those who edited the Camden Edition and to 
my friend, Horace Traubel, is sufficiently evident in the fol- 
lowing pages dotted with references. It was never my inten- 
tion to put out a work of erudition, but to print a full-length 
portrait, as real and living as possible, of a man about whom 
one may cram volumes without defining completely. The 



xviii AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION 

matter is inexhaustible. I would at least try to present an 
advance taste of his personality. 1 

This work, such as it is, slowly and tenderly pursued, I 
offer to-day with the hope of conveying to other minds the 
marvellous revelation contained in the personality of Walt 
Whitman. How many times I stopped in writing these 
pages, disconcerted by the grandeur and wonder of the fig- 
ure that I feel so near, persuaded that I was not per- 
meated enough by his especial atmosphere and his intimate 
significance. What does the sailor who courses the sea all 
his life know of it? — I say to myself. The surface. He 
has been able to take some soundings; but what is that to 
the leaping abyss? In reality the ocean remains to him 
unknown; and I well understand the unwonted scruple of an 
Addington Symonds who was unable till the last moment 
to complete the work which he had long prepared on the man 
more revered than all, to whose mastery he yielded and 
whose book he absorbed verse by verse. I have nevertheless 
persevered, ruled by an instinct stronger than all scruples. 
O may I not have failed! Above all, may I not have weak- 
ened the character of the great Liver, the character whose 
reality seems to baffle the effort of painters! 

October, 1907. L. B. 



iThe author notes specially these biographers: H. B. Bians, Bliss Perry, Horace Traubel. 



PART ONE 
ORIGIN AND YOUTH 

Long Island (1819-1841) 



BIRTHPLACE AND ANCESTORS 

At the close of the last century, an American artisan-poet 
summed up in one page his many-sided life. For long years 
he had been an invalid and he knew his end was near; he 
faced it in perfect peace and he was happy in casting a last 
backward glance on himself and the incidents of the journey 
whose last stage he was completing. He died the following 
year. 

This summary, laid down by an old man, is enough to show 
us that like many of his countrymen, he pursued a wide 
range of occupations: he was a printer, country school 
teacher, carpenter, volunteer nurse, and besides he made 
poems. But who would suspect all the depth and immensity 
which these simple and almost commonplace lines concealed, 
where might be recognized the description of an individual 
who, whatever he was, at least was akin to hundreds of 
others? How perceive that from this page emerges a monu- 
ment of solitary proportions, a life of the simplest bigness, 
the amplest, fullest, most extraordinary which has perhaps 
been lived on earth? A life open, joyous, expansive, multi- 
tudinary, enjoying deep draughts yet imperturbed and nat- 
ural, a life which has passed outright into a strange, phe- 
nomenal book, without parallel in its origin, character, signi- 
ficance. A life which makes the great adventurers or busiest 
captains of modern industry appear indeed poor, the more 
one has penetrated its depth and seized its ensemble. A 
life which seems to break the word to live in order to re- 
create it with new meaning. 

To describe this life, it -will suffice to follow this table of 
contents penned by Walt Whitman when close to death, 

3 



4 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

But at the very opening of the first chapter a strange uneasi- 
ness overcomes you: the difficulty of including the thousand 
aspects of a life at once so individual and so universal ap- 
pears well nigh insurmountable. The fear of marring, dis- 
torting, or clouding this great figure makes you falter in the 
attempt. A momentary awe is felt before this mystery 
which is alike vast and very simple. 

To conquer this disquietude we shall cling narrowly to the 
truth which in his life is so beautiful that to respect it 
scrupulously is the surest means of exalting the man. The 
truer one remains, the vaster is his measure. And in care- 
fully maintaining exactitude, we shall try above all to keep 
that central interior truth, which shall be unaffected by the 
omission of a date or an incident. Never the practice of 
subordinating detail to mass is more essential than for a full- 
length portrait of a Walt Whitman. 

To depict such a man living, it is necessary to show him 
in the concrete reality of his daily life. It is to preserve the 
colour, the atmosphere of the life lived and its natural savour, 
that I efface myself as much as possible, in the humility of a 
compiler, behind those who were in personal contact with 
him and caught him on the spot. The subject is too big for 
a biographer to seek pretext for making an effect. 

There is one chief fact, of which we are never to lose sight 
in these pages: the identity of the man and his book. 
Identity realized to a degree heretofore undreamed of and so 
perfect that all effort to sever them would be vain. "Read- 
ing him in his printed pages, seeing him near the fireside, 
are all one," 1 says one of his friends. The second of his biog- 
raphers likewise noted: "His body, his outward life, his in- 
ward spiritual existence and poetry, were all one; in every 
respect each tallied with the other, and any one of them could 
always be inferred from the other." 2 A similar appreciation 
is from one of the great companions of his life who declares 



iBucke, Traubel, and Harned: In Re Walt Whitman> p. 117. 
*Bucke: Walt Whitman, p. 51. 



BIRTHPLACE AND ANCESTORS 5 

that Walt Whitman every day is the "living commentary" of 
his book. 1 So we shall unceasingly evoke the work to explain 
the man, and reciprocally, when we try to define the poet- 
prophet. If this point of view is misconceived, both will be 
for us an enigma. 

It is but artificially and for a moment that we can separate 
the book from him who thus conceived it, without doubt in 
order to give himself more fully still than in life. This one — 
the poem-individual — is essentially indissoluble; the in- 
dividual appears in reality great as a poem, the poem offers 
itself to us as an individual. Let us recognize here that the 
novelty of the subject excludes the precise methods of biog- 
raphers, and that a more scientific rigour is not to be expected 
in the recital of the fife of Walt Whitman than he himself put 
into the living of it. 

Whatever may be the value of the book left by the Ameri- 
can bard — and in truth it is incalculable — it is no exaggera- 
tion to affirm that the man seems still more extraordinary. 
"Walt Whitman in his person is greater than his book or 
what his book imports," says one of the intimate friends 
of his old age. "He is made of that heroic stuff which creates 
such books." 2 In reality, they are both but the visible and 
invisible aspect of the same Personality. No detail shall be 
idle which compels us to penetrate further into the compre- 
hension of the living himself. The chapters of his life are the 
natural steps which lead us to the threshold of his poem, 
that we may enter in the right mood. Without this, we 
should undoubtedly stray long about the house before finding 
the door. 

The essential is that the man become familiar to us and 
reveal himself to us as he appeared to all who saw him pass 
along the pavements of New York, Washington, Phila- 
delphia. We can in full measure understand the great 
Elizabethan dramas, the Odyssey, the Song of Songs, or the 



l John Burroughs: Birds and Poets, The Flight of the Eagle, p. 213. See also Notes of the same, p. 13. 
tQamderis Compliment to Walt Whitman, p. 23. 



6 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORE 

Rig Veda with knowing scarcely anything of their authors. 
I do not believe that we could fully appreciate Leaves of 
Grass, ignorant of him who projected his all-powerful person- 
ality in this ode-epic of the modern Me. 

The Atlantic! From it he came, the old Northman; the 
far distant murmur of the ocean responded to his first cries; 
the tumult of its leaping waves formed the accompaniment 
of his first meditations; the rhythm of its tides, the undula- 
tion of its shores dictated to him the law of his poems; its 
breezes toughened his skin; its salt penetrated his flesh. He 
exhales an odour of the sea god; he expresses the ample rough- 
ness of one. He, himself, in his old age loved to be com- 
pared to some sea captain retired to his cabin, and dreaming 
of the voyages of the olden time. Walt Whitman might have 
been a sailor like the Williamses and the Kossabones of his 
maternal line had he not preferred the more audacious ven- 
ture, the sea of humanity. . . . 

Long Island stretches opposite the North American con- 
tinent, like a fish with its head about to strike into the midst 
of it, as if snapping Manhattan Island where rises New 
York. From Brooklyn to the promontory of Mont auk, 
which marks one of the two extremities of its tail, this gigantic 
cetacian measures nearly one hundred and twenty -five miles 
by an average breadth of twelve to thirteen miles. A chain 
of irregular hills which runs the entire length of the island 
and separates it into two ridges outlines its dorsal fin. 1 The 
Indians called it Paumanok and Walt Whitman adored the 
rude sonority of this name. 

Large, uncultivated stretches — forests of spruce, waste 
land, sand, salt marshes — communicate to this territory 
a wild, rough aspect. The south coast is bounded by 
flats, with immense lagoons, and in front of these straits 
and long bars of sand, natural dikes sustain the assaults 
of the Atlantic. Innumerable cone-shaped little islands 

il. Hull Piatt: Walt Whitman, p. 1. 



BIRTHPLACE AND ANCESTORS 7 

sprinkle the large south bay. To the east, on the stretches 
of the promontory which push into the open sea, are light- 
houses. During storms, these bars have often seen ship- 
wrecks, and these redoubtable, whitish looking shores keep 
the secret of many a tragedy of the sea. Region of winds 
and waves, region rude and little attractive, impress of a 
splendid desolation; immensity confronts one on every side, 
and an incessant subdued or furious clamour of the waves 
seems like an echo of it. The odour of marsh grass fills the 
bays. Not long ago all kinds of water game and fish abun- 
dantly stocked these shores, inhabited by a race of men 
fierce and hard like the Vikings, long since extinct. 

In violent contrast with this arid and solitary coast, the 
region of hills and the northern slope which they shelter, 
especially toward the centre, are smiling and cultivated. It 
is a country of hills and vales, pastures and woods — where 
abound the oak, fir, walnut, chestnut, acacia. Numerous 
fruit trees, springs, little streams of pure and shining water, 
and villages of low-built houses with their impressive little 
cemeteries remind one of Normandy, or of the English Suf- 
folk, "the Constable country." The environment here is 
essentially peasant and patriarchal; and at the commence- 
ment of the nineteenth century this fertile middle part of 
Long Island richly nourished its farmers. 1 Little country 
roads wound between hedges, binding the pastures and farms 
whose door yards were gay with lilacs. The numerous 
windings of the land formed infinitely varied perspectives. 
Beyond the waters of the strait, the coast of Connecticut is 
faintly outlined. The north coast, picturesque and indented, 
is a safe shelter of coves and inlets. 

Such is the double character, savage and soft, maritime 
and pastoral, of this island-whale, which an immense bridge 
now binds to New York. Time has much modified with- 
out destroying the charms of its undulating fields and the 
fierce splendour of its coasts. 

1. Hull Piatt: Walt Whitman, p. 8. 



8 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

At the humble beginnings of the great migration which 
brought Northern Europeans to the settlement of a new 
continent, two currents of different origin were diffused in 
Long Island. From New Amsterdam (the future New York) 
the Dutch advanced toward the centre of the island, occupy- 
ing all the western part, and notably Queens County. A 
little later, toward 1650, some English colonists, quitting the 
settlements of Massachusetts and Connecticut, crossed the 
sound to settle in Suffolk County, situated to the east. These 
two contingents, very distinct in origin, to which were added 
some Indians who were found toward the promontory of 
Montauk, and a small number of blacks, constituted the 
"Paumanackers" or Long Islanders. Thus the basis of the 
population of the island was allied directly to two great 
stocks which formed the foundation of the American na- 
tionality and whose fusion has determined the predominant 
character of the people. Whatever has been the importance 
of the other initial contingents, like the Scotch-Irish, the 
Swedes, or the Huguenots, and some modifications which 
the after currents have carried to that secret chemistry in 
which a new people is elaborated, the contributions of the 
Netherlands and of Great Britain remain the essential ones. 
And kept apart by its insularity from the great floods of 
immigration, and of the vast enterprises which transformed 
the continent, Long Island was able for a long time to con- 
serve these two elements of its population in an almost pure 
state, and to remain like a fragment of Primitive America, 
the base and security of future America. The people of the 
villages applied themselves to agriculture, stock raising, 
fishing, ship building. They were renowned as excellent 
farmers and hardy sailors. Toward 1820, the entire island 
did not possess sixty thousand inhabitants 1 : to-day Brooklyn 
alone counts nearly a million and a half. 

In the middle part of the island, about three miles from 
the village of Huntington, and slightly to the east of the 

m. B. Binns: Life of Walt Whitman, p. 3. 






BIRTHPLACE AND ANCESTORS 9 

limit of Queens and Suffolk counties, which marked also 
the beginning of the line of cleavage of the two nationalities, 
is situated the village of West Hills, to which belonged the 
patrimonial farm of the "Whitman homestead" where the 
great-grandfather, the grandfather, and the father of the poet 
had lived, cultivating their estate. 

The origin of the American Whitmans goes back to the 
time of Elizabeth. The acknowledged ancestor was a cer- 
tain Abijah Whitman of whom old England saw the birth 
about the year 1560, and whose three sons crossed the Atlan- 
tic. The first, Zechariah, who was born in 1595 and became 
a clergyman, sailed in 1635 in the True Love, and settled in 
Milford, Connecticut. Five years later, the second son, 
John, who was born in 1602, embarked in the same vessel, 
and steered toward Weymouth, Massachusetts. He died 
in 1692, having had five daughters and five sons, all living in 
1685; one of the latter, Samuel, lived to be a centenarian 1 and 
another, Reverend Zechariah Whitman, of Hull, Massachu- 
setts (nephew of the other Zechariah) was a graduate of 
Harvard (1668), whom the annals of Dorchester describe 
as a Vir pius, humilis, orthodoxies, utilissimus. 2 It was, one 
believes, the posterity of John which spread across New Eng- 
land and the whole of America the name of Whitman, borne 
by thousands of individuals, living proof of the vigour and 
fecundity of the original stock. The third son of Abijah, 
Robert, born in 1615, came to America in the Abigail in 1635, 
married in 1648, and lived till 1679. 

It is the first of the three brothers who interests us here for 
to him is attached the geneology of the poet. A son of the 
Reverend Zechariah of Milford, named Joseph, 3 crossed 
Long Island Sound sometime before 1660, and settled in 



^ucke: Walt Whitman, p. 14. 

2 0. L. Triggs: Selection from Walt Whitman, Introduction, p. xvi. 

'It appears that this Joseph Whitman was not the son of the Reverend Zechariah Whitman of Mil- 
ford, who died without children. He may have come from Stratford, Conn., and should have seen the 
light of day in England (Bliss Ferry: Walt Whitman, pp. 2-3). It is a geneological point which no 
doubt future biographers will clear up. 



10 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

the village of Huntington, which was founded in 1653 
by the colonists of Massachusetts upon land bought from 
the Indians. 1 It is only known that he won a fair sub- 
sistence, that he lived some thirty years and was named by 
his fellow townsmen for different public employments. 2 It 
was he, or perhaps one of his sons, whose name remains un- 
known, 3 who bought the farm of West Hills. This unknown 
son himself had a son named Nehemiah, born about 1705, 
who married Sarah White, who lived from 1713 to 1803 4 . 
The oldest of their four sons, Jesse, was born in 1749 
and died in 1803. He married, in 1775, Hannah Brush, 
daughter of Tredwell Brush, and had by her three sons, one 
of whom, Walter, was born July 14, 1789, the very day of 
the taking of the Bastille, and who was the father of the poet. 

An exceptional vigour appears to have been the chief char- 
acteristic of the family. The Whitmans were in general tall 
and solidly built. One pictures them as tranquil and rather 
grave, very firm of character and chary of speech, exclusively 
occupied with their land and their cattle : rude men whom no 
power on earth could move and who seemed to partake of the 
tranquil force of the elements. They were remarkable for 
their longevity and their fecundity: from the ancestor who 
came from England to the family line of Walt, large families 
were an uninterrupted tradition. There are accorded to his 
great-grandfather, Nehemiah Whitman, twenty-two grand- 
sons and granddaughters, and beyond these others of whom 
trace has been lost. 5 

It was a race of ample and rich virility, built for enduring 
work, and without the least trace of feebleness or degeneracy. 
It contributed fundamental and massive qualities, which 
make builders of cities. Although among the Whitmans of 

iBliss Perry: Walt Whitman, p. 2. 

m.: p. 3. 
' 8 BIiss Perry (Walt Whitman, p. 3.) cites a John Whitman, Sr., who filled some municipal functions 
between 1718 and 1730, and who might be, according to him, the father of Nehemiah. 

*Camden Edition, Introduction, pp. xii-xiv. 

*Id., p. xii. 



BIRTHPLACE AND ANCESTORS 11 

New England a number were ministers, professors, and grad- 
uates of Harvard or of Yale, 1 those of Long Island always 
remained outside the liberal professions. Good farmers, 
excellent citizens, some among them artisans, not one among 
the descendants of Zechariah has left traces of mental distinc- 
tion. All were and remained of the people, manual workers, 
farmers "with little or no formal culture and with no marked 
artistic tastes in any direction." 2 Their posterity form 
"an uninterrupted succession of simple workingmen, the 
best although the most obscure foundation of democracies." 3 
They enjoyed, however, a certain ease and belonged to "that 
class which worked with their own hands and marked by 
neither riches nor real poverty." From father to son for 
nearly a century and a half their farm of West Hills gave them 
a living. They were hospitable, solicitous of ease and of the 
education of their children, and their reputation in the 
county was excellent. 4 From the beginning the property 
which they possessed must have been considerable, and 
Nehemiah knew how to augment it. But because of a suc- 
cession of adverse circumstances it came much diminished 
into the hands of Walter, the father of the poet. 

Some individuals of the family are distinguished by a few 
unlooked for characteristics. For example, Sarah White, 
the great-grandmother of Walt, seems to have realized the 
ideal of a virago. Of dark complexion, chewing tobacco 
like an old man, brusque and erect, she showed to strangers 
a repellent countenance, and was tender only to the little 
Negroes always hanging at her skirts. A consummate 
horsewoman, she was seen, after she became a widow, riding 
out every day to visit her land and to direct her slaves, swear- 
ing like a pagan when she found them at fault. She died 
at the age of ninety. 5 Hannah Brush, grandmother of the poet, 

*0. L. Triggs: Selections, Introduction, p. xvi, 

*Camden Edition, Introduction, p. xvii- 

"Id.: p. xviii. 

*John Burroughs: Notes, p. 120. 

*Camden Edition, Introduction, p. xx. 



12 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

was an orphan, reared by her Aunt, Vashti Piatt, proprietor 
of an important farm and of numerous slaves, in the eastern 
part of the island. She was a school-teacher for a time and 
besides an excellent seamstress, a woman of the old school, 
fair and robust, of natural distinction, fine, intelligent, and 
gay. 1 As she had lived through the Revolutionary period 
down to 1834, her grandson, who knew her till he was fifteen, 
heard her recount her memories and knew from her the fiery 
spirit which animated his ancestors of that great epoch. 2 
During the war of Independence, the Whitmans were not- 
ably among the most enthusiastic "rebels" of the island. 
Many among them had served under Washington, some as 
officers, such as the son of Nehemiah who was killed as 
lieutenant at the Battle of Brooklyn : an event the poet was 
to interpret in one of his poems, History of a Centenary? 
Major Brush, uncle of Hannah Brush, expiated in an English 
prison the ardour of his patriotism. 

If the Whitmans belonged to the most vigorous British 
element in one section, their neighbours, his mother's family, 
the; Van Velsors, who lived nearly three miles from West 
Hills, on the boundary of Queens County, could equally 
pass for typical representatives of the old Americanized 
Dutch. The Van Velsors, like the Whitmans, lived for 
many generations upon the same farm, situated in a pictur- 
esque corner at the border of the solitary road which rises 
from Cold Spring Harbour, a small port opening upon the 
sound. 

The date of their arrival in the county is uncertain; but the 
first of the name had certainly come with the Dutch colo- 
nists of New Amsterdam, who were dispersed in the west 
of Long Island. The ancestor, the farthest removed whom 
one can name, is the legendary "Kossabone, Old Sea Wolf," 
who died at the age of ninety. Walt, in one of his poems, 



Wamden Edition, Introduction: p. xx. 
*Triggs: Selections, Introduction, p. xvi. 
9 Camd$n Edition, Introduction, p, xix* 



BIRTHPLACE AND ANCESTORS 13 

evoked, from family traditions, his impressive death in his 
great arm chair, facing the sea and the vessels, his dying eye 
following their evolutions. 1 It is conjectured that Mary or 
Jenny Kossabone, who married the great-grandfather of the 
poet, Garrett Van Velsor, a cloth weaver, deceased in 1812, 
was his granddaughter. The second of the six issues of this 
marriage was "Major" Cornelius, who united with Naomi 
(shortened to Amy) Williams, one of the six children of 
"Captain" John Williams and Mary Woolley. Naomi Van 
Velsor died in 1826 and the Major in 1837. The poet knew 
them in his infancy: and it was of them that Whitman's 
mother, Louisa Van Velsor, was born. 

Despite their proximity and their life so closely alike, and 
the identity of their aspirations, the Van Velsors and the 
Whitmans differed remarkably one from the other. Among 
the Whitmans, the British stock, the chief trait was firmness 
of character, verging almost upon hardness; the maternal 
ancestors were indebted to their Low Country origin for their 
abundant vitality and joviality. Among the farmers of 
Cold Spring a good humour dominated, a bonhomie, a warm, 
communicative cordiality, natural to a people in possession 
of the art of living: they had something more flush, more 
plastic, more varied, and more open, than their neighbours. 
There must be added to these characteristics an indomitable 
spirit of hardness, and of liberty which had so magnificently 
proved the race in the mother country and which persisted 
in the new world. The Van Velsors were farmers, stock 
raisers, artisans, sailors. Cornelius, the one who stands out 
as the most picturesque of the group, offers the perfect type 
of the Americanized Hollander. His grandson describes him 
for us as stout, red, jovial, frank, with a sonorous voice and a 
characteristic physiognomy, 2 "the best of men," affirms 
someone in the neighbourhood who knew him well. 3 The 



l Leates of Grass, p. 395. 
tCompUte Prose, p. 5. 
•Backer Walt Whitman, p. 15. 



14 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

Van Velsors were noted for their blood horses, which they 
reared and cared for themselves. 1 The Major always owned 
beautiful horses and his sons followed his example. 2 His 
wife, Naomi Williams, belonged to a family which from father 
to son were sailors. Her father, John Williams, a kind and 
charitable man fond of good cheer, was Captain and joint 
owner of a schooner plying between New York and Florida, 
and his brother was likewise a sailor. Both perished at sea. 3 
Naomi is pictured as truly adorable with a presence of sweet- 
ness and intimate charm. Generous, hospitable, knowing 
how to care for her children, of elevated soul, deep, intuitive, 
she showed herself in every way the worthy spouse of the 
excellent " Major." Her grandson kept a particularly touch- 
ing memory of her, which one day inspired this strophe: 

Behold a woman! 

She looks out from her quaker cap, her face is clearer and more beautiful 
than the sky. 

She sits in an armchair under the shaded porch of the farm house, 
The sun just shines on her old white head. 

Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen, 

Her grandsons raised the flax, and her grand-daughters spun it with the dis- 
taff and the wheel.* 

The Williamses were probably of Welsh stock. The poet, 
however, made little of this origin: and whatever may be the 
likelihood of it, one must acknowledge that nothing particu- 
larly celtic appeared in the forming of Walt Whitman. 

An influence on the contrary, of which he acknowledges 
indubitable traces in him, was that of the Van Velsors, the 
good people of Holland. It is but right that he felicitates him- 
self in yielding to it. No European race has carried across 
the world a blood more precious, a more energetic principle of 

^Complete Prose, p. 6. 
*John Burroughs: Notes, p. 78, 
s Complete Prose, p. 0. 
^Leaves of Grass, p. 355. 



BIRTHPLACE AND ANCESTORS 15 

vitality and fecundity, than that of the Netherlands, which 
notably constitute, chronologically and characteristically, the 
founding of the state of New York. "Not the Scotch-Irish 
stock itself, or the Jewish, is more dourly and stubbornly 
prepotent in human society than is this Dutch strain in 
America. . . . These original stocks tinge and saturate 
humanity through generations. . . . Few realize how 
the Dutch element has percolated through our population 
in New York and Pennsylvania. As late as 1750 more than 
one-half of New York State were Dutch. The rural Dutch 
to-day almost always have large families of children, and 
form in every respect the most solid element in their com- 
munity. In New York City and in Brooklyn and Albany it 
is superfluous to say that to belong to a Dutch family is to 
belong to blue blood, the aristocracy. . . ." x In the 
United States the Hollander has carried his realist instinct, 
positive and earthy, his solid intelligence, his methodical 
spirit, his passion for independence, and above all his mag- 
nificent physical qualities of health and of poise. Destined 
to assist in building the foundation of the American edifice, 
he was the guarantee of its aplomb, and its solidity, as his 
brothers of the Southern hemisphere assure the future of the 
South African Federation. Without the British element, it 
is probable that the United States would not exist to-day: 
but without the Dutch element it is certain it would not have 
attained its present grandeur. Bucke is thus right in affirm- 
ing that New Yorkers should be as proud of the ship Gooi 
Vrow and the debarking of the first Dutch, as the inhabitants 
of New England are of the Mayflower and of Plymouth 
Rock. 2 The race of Netherlands is above all a mother-race. 
Its presence upon a new soil was a blessing to the nation 
which one day should develop there. 

Other influences marked the spot where the poet was to be 
born, and affected particularly his parents. The sect of 

^Bucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 197. W. S. Kennedy: Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, p. 89. 
»Bucke: Walt Whitman, p. 17 (Notel 



16 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

Quakers or Friends was strongly implanted in Long Island, 
which was to become one of their centres. The shoemaker, 
George Fox, its founder, when on his pilgrimage in America 
met attentive auditors among the Paumanackers and his 
word had awakened echoes in the soul of this rude and in- 
dependent population when he came in 1672, to preach to 
the people in the open air, as in the time as the Apostles. 1 
Many recollections of that time still live in the memory of 
the Islanders when Walt was a child. One of the great 
Quaker figures, the preacher, Elias Hicks, was born on 
Long Island and had evangelized it. He was a radical 
spirit who, finding the doctrine of the society too form- 
alistic, had fomented a dissent. Hicks despised creeds, 
churches, and every organization of the religious life. Re- 
ligion for him consisted in spiritual emotion, in a "secret, 
ecstatic silence," which in obedience to a Divine Law speaks 
in the depth of the individual conscience. All exterior mani- 
festations were in his eyes but lies. "Seek the truth only 
within yourself ' ' : such was one of his essential precepts . "He 
is the most democratic of the religionists — the prophets," 2 
wrote Walt Whitman in a brief tract which he tardily conse- 
crated to Elias Hicks, to carry out an idea of his youth in 
rendering homage to one who had expressed the religious 
aspirations of his ancestors. Thus the Hicksites were af- 
firmed as the left of quakerism, which was itself the extreme 
left of the rich variety of sects issuing from the Reformation. 

It is important to know the expressly original and hetero- 
dox character of this society of Friends, which represents 
sentiment extremely adverse to dogma. They have neither 
ministers nor sacraments. The divinity of Christ and the 
authority of the Scriptures mean much less to them than the 
"interior light" which illumines the conscience of every man 
upon earth, and which they made the rock of their doctrine. 

The Quakers were people of ultra simple manners, in- 



Womplete Prose, p. 477. 
nd., p. 457. 



BIRTHPLACE AND ANCESTORS 17 

flexible and opinionated, headstrong, narrow, fundamentally 
pacifist, abhorring oppression under all forms, political as 
well as spiritual: all in all, religious individualists. Their 
exclusive obedience to the appeal from within, which they 
judged a divine order manifested to man, gave to their 
character a special stamp, a rigidity which manifested itself 
in their habits and their social conduct. They were looked 
upon with suspicion by the other sects, who disapproved of 
their excessive independence — and found themselves, notably 
in colonial times, in radical opposition to the Puritans. 
Opposed to these, who leaned toward intolerance and theoc- 
racy, quakerism represented the origin of the most modern 
principles, such as the separation of church and state, equal- 
ity of all religious denominations, free trade, justice to the 
aborigines. The Friends were discontented with England, 
and reached America to find themselves cruelly persecuted 
by the Puritans of New England. 1 By the strength of their 
obstinacy, they succeeded in doing away with the proscrip- 
tion of heretics in Massachusetts. The prosperous Quaker 
colony of Pennsylvania became the hive from which swarmed 
through the West the bearers of the libertarian spirit, the 
pioneers. 2 Such is the spirit, synonym of the fierce and irre- 
concilable independence, of the old Quakers who, under a 
rude surface, bore the vital element of democracy and of the 
modern world. These men queer, but simple and great, 
despite their absurd narrowness, who refused to uncover 
before any one, were he the president of the United States, 
who thee'd and thou'd everybody, and forbade any inscrip- 
tion upon their graves, were the stoics of our age and the 
ancestors of the more recent free, religious thinkers. The 
country might esteem itself happy which in its beginnings 
had them, for from them came men like Thomas Paine and 
Lincoln. 

With the Whitmans as with the Van Velsors, the sect 



l Complcte Prose, p. 477. 

«John Fiske: The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America. 



18 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

numbered adherents or met sympathy. The grandfather 
Whitman, Jesse — who likewise knew Thomas Paine 1 — had 
been in his youth the intimate companion of Elias Hicks, to 
become later his admirer. The father of the poet followed 
his sermons assiduously: and Walt himself remembers to 
have been present, as a small child, at one of his last preach- 
ings. 2 The whole family was more or less tinged with quak- 
erism. On his mother's side traces of it manifest them- 
selves : Amy Williams, if she was not perhaps a true Quakeress, 
as her grandson has told us, inclined strongly toward the 
sect. 3 This particularly sane and strengthening atmosphere 
of the society of Friends the poet could absorb by all his 
pores from his family and in his travels about the island. We 
see how this spirit of independence and heterodoxy would 
reappear in him, enlarged, transmuted, and what invisible 
and strong bonds, beyond the most patent divergencies, 
attached to the old Quakers the most modern and most en- 
franchised of men. In his pages on Elias Hicks one sees 
these secret affinities very closely, so that one can there re- 
cover the advances of religious individualism in its march 
beyond Christianity. 

i H. B. Binns: Life of Walt Whitman, p. xxv. 

Complete Prose, p. 465 . 

*H. B. Binns: Life of Walt Whitman, Appendix A, pp. 347-348. 



II 

THE WEST HILLS FARM 

On June 8, 1816, Walter Whitman married Louisa 
Van Velsor, a daughter of one of the farmers of Cold 
Spring. 

Like his fathers, Walter Whitman cultivated the farm of 
West Hills. But the support it yielded the family in his 
boyhood was meagre, and at fifteen he left the farm for New 
York to apprentice himself to carpentry. When he re- 
turned to the country he undercook the business of general 
building and carried his tools to the different parts of the 
island where his work called him. He was considered a 
first-rate craftsman, doing conscientious, durable work. 
"Not a few of his barn and house frames" — wrote Bucke in 
1883 — "with their seasoned timbers and careful braces are 
still standing in Suffolk and Queens Counties and in Brook- 
lyn, strong and plumb as ever." 1 

He was a kind of giant, measuring more than six feet, 
said a man of the neighbourhood, of physique as solid and 
massive as his buildings, with countenance serious and rather 
taciturn. Morally he was fundamentally honest, calm, and 
rigid, a man of great firmness. His features bespoke 
strength and sincerity, that kind of serene and austere primi- 
tive energy so often seen in portraits of men of "the antique 
time," so strikingly unlike the restless mobility and fatigue 
of contemporary faces. There is, moreover, lurking about 
the mouth and eye, a certain hardness. Walt confesses 
that, in his youth, he often had tempestuous discussions with 
his father, roused by his parental authoritativeness : little 
storms which the excellent mother, natural peace maker, 

l Bucke: Walt Whitman, p. 15. 

19 



20 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORE 

always dispelled. 1 In a poem wholly penetrated with im- 
pressions of his childhood, a certain little interior picture 
evokes a scene of this kind which might well have been in- 
spired by a memory of the paternal home. 2 Like his kin- 
dred Walter Whitman was rather slow and placid, but once 
without command of himself he was violent as a cyclone. 
His son, nevertheless, kept affectionately close to him till his 
death, and could write truthfully of his father and mother: 
"As for loving and disinterested parents, no child or man 
has ever had more reasons to bless and to thank them than 
I." He was a fine, a true Whitman, this husband of Louisa. 
However, his strong qualities do not seem to have favoured 
him in his struggle for existence. Unlucky or too honest, 
perhaps without a sense of business, the good workman knew 
constant care and, in dying, left nothing to his family for 
patrimony except regret. 

His wife, Louisa Van Velsor, was, if we are to believe her 
son, a wife and mother of exceptional character; when we 
look at her portrait, we must credit his enthusiastic tes- 
timony, who declared he saw in her "the most suave woman 
whom he had ever seen or known or expected to know." 3 It 
is one of those faces from which sovereignly radiates beauty 
and an infinite benevolence. Something unspeakably amia- 
ble and powerful, at the same time tender and strong, looks 
out from this good old face, still agreeable and smiling at sixty. 
It is easy to believe one's self looking at the magnificent and 
fecund image of earth or of the mother of men, equal to any 
task, like that of bringing forth a new race. How eloquent 
this face, rich and racy of the peasant, which reflects a light of 
interior contentment and eternal youth. She had nine chil- 
dren and lived poor. She was an * ' ample woman ' ' according to 
Whitman's expression, who glorified in her person the virtues 
of the women of the Dutch race, serene, maternal, and fruitful. 



l Camden Edition, Introduction, p. xvi. 

^Leaves of Grass, p. 283. 

8 See the daguerreotype reproduced: The Wound Dresser, p. 47. 



THE WEST HILLS FARM 21 

She was, to be sure, a simple, illiterate woman, whose 
world was her household. But like her mother, she possessed 
intuitive qualities very intimate and almost divine, which 
belong to superior women. In her letters to her family, 
which she could write only with difficulty, she reveals in- 
comparable spiritual gifts. 1 She irregularly followed religious 
exercises, a little indifferent to the denomination of the 
church which she frequented : she pretended to be a Baptist, 
but, in reality, her preferences drew her rather toward the 
Quakers. Like her husband, she did not practice and was 
content to affirm her sympathy for the same sect, in going 
to hear Elias Hicks. Religious observance of any kind in 
the home there was none. 2 To those who saw her only in 
her old age, she appeared elderly, grave, "imposing and 
contained," full of "simple, organic energy." 3 She was 
in truth a typical example of those "powerful, uneducated 
persons" whom her son was to exalt. 4 She was far superior 
to her husband 5 and Walt Whitman confessed himself in- 
debted to this admirable woman for his more intimate quali- 
ties; his genius did not prevent his acknowledging himself 
the spiritual son of this humble housewife. And it was the 
clear perception of this debt, proudly confessed, which 
strengthened the bond which united them. An exceptional 
tenderness, beyond a filial attachment, always existed be- 
tween Walt and his mother. "He never speaks of her," 
says his friend John Burroughs, "without love and passion 
flooding his face." 6 His correspondence, his conversation, 
his works in prose and in verse are sprinkled with allusions 
to his "dear mother," all proving a passionate affection and 
a respect almost religious. WHien he writes to her, he seems 
to become a little child telling her his love and his daily 

iBueke: Walt Whitman, Man and Poet, Cosmopolis, June, 1898, p. 687; 

2 Bucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 38; 

% Qamden Edition, Introduction, p. xxfi; 

4 Bucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 353: 

^Camden Edition, Introduction, p. xxii. 

•John Burroughs: Notes, p. 121. 



22 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

thoughts. And after her death, he characterized her from 
the depths of his sorrow, "the most perfect and most mag- 
netic character, the most rare combination of the practical, 
moral and spiritual, the least selfish of all whom he had ever 
known. . . .' ?1 He has otherwise immortalized her in the 
monument which he has dedicated to her among his Songs of 
Parting in a strophe the sorrow of which is so poignant. 2 

In these two beings so representative of their origin, two 
complementary races united. We shall see later what this 
fusion signifies, when it comes to be realized in the life of 
their offspring, with the addition of genius and even of some- 
thing more than genius. The maternal contribution tem- 
pered with its experienced optimism and benevolence and 
generous affectionateness, whatever he may have had of se- 
verity and of tension, of the rigid and narrow in the char- 
acter of the Whitmans; and in one point at least, the in- 
clinations of the two families combined and drew them to- 
ward spiritual independence. 

The union of these two races was therefore the extraor- 
dinary promise of a completer human type, one profiting by 
all the power of a new soil. It is not an artifice of the 
panegyrist to see the exceptional natural advantage which 
attended the coming of this truly predestined man. Abys- 
mal mystery of hereditary transmissions, successive ming- 
lings, as in a series of crucibles, the slow and sure human 
preparation ! These words of Doctor Bucke, the biographer 
of the poet, are here invested with particular authority: "No 
conclusion of modern science is surer than this : that there is 
no great man without great ancestors, that to produce a 
supreme personality it is first necessary that exceptional 
stock be prepared. Then indeed many shall be called for the 
one who is chosen." 3 

It may be asserted that this exceptional stock was veri- 



l Complete Prose, p. 274 (Note). 

^Leaves of Grass, p. 376. 

8 Bucke: Walt Whitman, Man and Poet, Cosmopolis, June, 1889, p. 687. 



THE WEST HILLS FARM 23 

tably "prepared" when Walt was born, May 31, 1819, at 
the West Hills farm, second son of Walter Whitman, the 
carpenter, and of Louisa Van Velsor. He found in his cradle 
the enormous strength and health accumulated by his family, 
nowise diminished like the family fortune, but increased 
each generation. He was the issue of a race of manual 
labourers, peasants, artisans, sailors, of individuals skilled in 
various kinds of business, but equally mingling with the earth 
and sea, with the air, with elemental things. He belonged 
to the chosen race of the common people, sprang from a soil 
admirably virgin, to be converted into intellectuality and 
art. Not one of his family had been affected by culture, 
falsified by an excessive development of sensibility, vitiated 
by the miseries of urban life. Nothing but a natural soil 
about this young branch. He was an off -shoot, sprouting 
from the most authentic American trunk, from the very 
heart of the race. And to be indeed of pure race, signified 
for an American, to be the issue of a mixed blood; likewise, 
in a democracy real and not fictitious, to be of high birth, 
one must come from average people, the sanest portion of 
the mass, and not from titled and privileged men. In this 
respect the infant of West Hills was of high birth. His 
forebears, women as well as men, represented the nucleus of 
individuals superior in energy and vitality, by which the 
United States was truly to be built. They were great per- 
sonages of the people. Walt much later had the right to be 
proud of them, and in truth he was. He could well, in his 
candid, limitless pride say 

Well begotten, and raised by a perfect mother . . . 

and reflecting on all his ancestors, dedicated from century 
to century to great primordial labours, could proclaim: 

I come from people in their proper spirit. 

The location of West Hills is particularly pleasant. It is 
a retired spot among hills where vegetation is luxuriant. In 



24 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

the midst of orchards are farms, prairies, old roads bordered 
with dense tufted hedges, and shaded here and there with 
great trees. Insects, birds, springs, game, and flowers 
abound; here unfolds the very heart of the farm region of 
Long Island. 

As for the estate of the Whitmans — "it was," according 
to their descendant, "a fine domain, five hundred acres, all 
good soil, gently sloping east and south, about one-tenth 
woods, plenty of grand old trees." There were, he further 
tells us, "broad and beautiful farm lands of my grandfather 
(1780) and of my father. There was the new house (1810), 
the big oak a hundred and fifty or two hundred years old; 
there the wells, the sloping kitchen-garden, and a little way 
off even the remain sof the dwelling of my great-grandfather 
(1750-'60) still standing, with its mighty timbers and low 
ceilings. Near by, a stately grove of tall, vigorous black 
walnuts, beautiful, Apollo-like, the sons or grandsons, no 
doubt, of black walnuts during or before 1776. On the other 
side of the road spread the famous apple orchard over twenty 
acres, the trees planted by hands long mouldering in the 
grave (my uncle Jesse's), but quite many of them evidently 
capable of throwing out their annual blossoms and fruit 

yet." 1 

The primitive ancestral home still remains and is to-day 
used as a wagon shed. The newer one where the poet was 
born is now occupied by a farmer and life has not left it. It 
is a small two-story house, a little stoop in front. Its slop- 
ing walls, its grassy court before the entrance, the lilac bush 
decorating its front, the barrier of wood and the well curbs 
near by, give it a stamp savouring of the rustic and the an- 
tique. The habitation is humble in appearance but comfort- 
able. 2 Aside from a wing built on the right, it is still as it 
was built nearly a century ago. And in a region which the 
proximity of the enormous metropolitan city transforms 



l Complete Prose, p. 4. 

m. B. Binns: Life of Walt Whitman, p, 8. 



THE WEST HILLS FARM 25 

little by little into a suburb, the place still retains the charm 
of solitude and of nature. 

West Hills is near enough to the sea for its confused noises 
to be heard; especially on peaceful nights, after a storm, the 
muffled and distant rumbling of the waves produce a mar- 
vellous effect. Walt always kept the echo of the "mystic surf- 
beat of the sea." Very near the farm is the elevation, Jaynes 
Hill, the culminating point of the island. From this height, 
which is perhaps but a hundred yards, a marvellous panorama 
of fields, wood, hills, bounded by the waters of the sound on 
one side, by the ocean on the other, surrounds and subdues 
you. More than once in his youth the poet made its ascent 
to impregnate himself with space and wind, to embrace the 
immense horizon of land and sea. The whole region abounds 
in striking and varied perspectives. 

As for the life which the family of the old farm lived at the 
beginning of the last century, it is described in these lines, 
by John Burroughs, the earliest of the Whitman biogra- 
phers, and who had in the writing of his books advice and 
suggestions from Whitman himself : 

The Whitmans lived in a long story-and-a-half farm-house, hugely tim- 
ber'd, which is still standing. A great smoke-canopied kitchen with vast 
hearth and chimney, form'd one end of the house. The existence of slavery 
in New York at that time, and the possession by the family of some twelve 
or fifteen slaves, house and field servants, gave things quite a patriarchal 
look. The very young darkies could be seen, a swarm of them, toward 
sundown, in this kitchen, squatted in a circle on the floor, eating their sup- 
per of Indian pudding and milk. In the house, and in food and furniture, 
all was rude, but substantial. No carpets or stoves were known, and no 
coffee, and tea or sugar only for the women. Rousing wood fires gave 
both warmth and light on winter nights. Pork, poultry, beef, and all the 
ordinary vegetables and grains were plentiful. Cider was the men's com- 
mon drink, and used at meals. The clothes were mainly homespun. 
Journeys were made by both men and women on horse-back. Both sexes 
labor'd with their own hands — the men on the farm — the women in the 
house and around it. Books were scarce. The annual copy of the al- 
manac was a treat, and was pored over through the long winter evenings. 
I must not forget to mention that both these families were near enough 



26 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

to the sea to behold it from the high places, and to hear in the still hours 
the roar of the surf; the latter, after a storm, giving a peculiar sound at 
night. Then all hands, male and female, went down frequently on beach 
and bathing parties, and the men on practical expeditions for cutting salt 
hay, and for clamming and fishing. 1 

The Van Velsors lived a similar kind of life. From among 
his memories, the poet evokes "their vast kitchen and ample 
fireplace, and sitting room adjoining, the plain furniture, the 
meals, the house full of merry people, my grandmother Amy's 
sweet old face in its quaker cap, my grandfather, the * Ma- 
jor' " — 2 all the dear farm decorations which were so familiar 
to him in his childhood. Less lucky than that of the Whit- 
mans, the "long irregular house a sombre gray brown, with 
walls covered in shingles, with the outhouses, the stable, 
and the vast barn," of the Van Velsors has long since disap- 
peared and "the plow has passed over its foundations." 

These last lines date from a journey which the poet made 
to West Hills when he" was sixty-three years old. After 
having lived and worked, he was seized with a desire to see 
his native home. 

All the religious sentiment which attaches one to a line of 
ancestors and to a corner of the soil is revealed in the touch- 
ing page where the old man gives an account of his visit to 
the little cemeteries, lonely and wild, nature in full swing, 
conquered by vegetable life, where his relatives were resting: 

July 29, 1881. — After more than forty years' absence (except a brief 
visit, to take my father there once more, two years before he died), went 
down Long Island on a week's jaunt to the place where I was born, thirty 
miles from New York City. Rode around the old familiar spots, viewing 
and pondering and dwelling long upon them, everything coming back to 
me. — I now write these lines seated on an old grave (doubtless of a century 
since at least) on the burial hill of the Whitmans of many generations. I 
Fifty and more graves are quite plainly traceable, and as many more de- j 
cay'd out of all form — depress'd mounds, crumbled and broken stones, 
cover'd with moss — the gray and sterile hill, the clumps of chestnuts out- I 



iJohn Burroughs: Notes, pp. 78-79. 
'Complete Prose, p. 5. 



THE WEST HILLS FARM 27 

side, the silence, just varied by the soughing wind. There is always the 
deepest eloquence of sermon or poem in any of these ancient graveyards 
of which Long Island has so many; so what must this one have been to 
me? My whole family history, with its succession of links, from the first 
settlement down to date, told here — three centuries concentrate on this 
sterile acre. 

The next day, July 30, I devoted to the maternal locality, and if pos- 
sible was still more penetrated and impress'd. I write this paragraph on 
the burial hill of the Van Velsors, near Cold Spring, the most significant 
depository of the dead that could be imagin'd, without the slightest help 
from art, but far ahead of it, soil sterile, a mostly bare plateau — flat of half 
an acre, the top of a hill, brush and well grown trees and dense woods 
bordering all around, very primitive, secluded, no visitors, no road (you 
can not drive here, you have to bring the dead on foot, and follow on foot). 
Two or three score graves quite plain, as many more almost ribb'd out. 
My grandfather Cornelius and my grandmother Amy (Naomi) and nu- 
merous relatives nearer or remoter, on my mother's side, lie buried here 
The scene as I stood or sat, the delicate and wild odor of the woods, a 
slightly drizzling rain, the emotional atmosphere of the place, and the 
inferr'd reminiscences, were fitting accompaniments. 1 

This same emotion we feel in our turn before the two 
sketches illustrating Bucke's book, where the etcher Pennell 
knew how to translate with such intensity and mute and 
poignant eloquence the anonymous graves where sleep the 
ancestors who prepared the coming of the poet. 

We find ourselves in the presence of origins. And we 
should interrogate them without haste before following the 
man in his moving and diverse career; they forever fash- 
ioned him and his work; they furnished him a base so solid 
and so vast in life and in art that each of his steps is firmer, 
each of his songs freer, by the effort of the generations which 
preceded him. We encounter them everywhere in the course 
of his life, blended with his acts and his verse. He owes 
them his amplitude, his health, and his strength. Walt 
Whitman is not a magnificent flower blooming suddenly and 
artificially. He is a product of nature, amplified by the 
august individuality which was granted him by superaddi- 

Womplete Prose, p. 4. 



28 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

tion. Whence the particular interest which adheres in dis- 
covering his roots and the soil into which they penetrate. 

This prelude, which holds in germ the motif of the 
drama, this momentary pause upon the threshold before 
entering, to give us time to examine the surroundings, the 
situation, the aspect of the extraordinary dwelling where we 
are guests, is not meant to please a vain ambition of a biog- 
rapher. The poet himself commands us not to neglect 
any of the elements which concurred in his genesis. They 
contribute truly to one essential part, to an explanation of 
the wonderful riddle which he is. It is only after having 
studied all the depth of the influences from soil, from race, 
from ancestors, from environmment, that we can seize the 
real meaning of these verses : 

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form'd from this soil, this air, 
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents 
the same, l . . . . 



leaves of Grass, p. 29. 



Ill 

YEARS OF YOUTH AND APPRENTICESHIP 

The child received the Christian name of Walter, but the 
family dropped the last syllable, no doubt to distinguish him 
from the father. 1 This familiar name of Walt was retained 
and definitely adopted by the poet after the first edition of 
his book, as truer and more intimate. He wished to be for 
all but Walt Whitman, as he was for his family, and posterity 
will not know any other name. And already one writes 
simply Walt, as one says Jean Jacques. 

Walt was four years old when his parents quitted the 
farm among the hills to live in the big town which was 
developing at the western extremity of Long Island. It 
was no longer a time when one was born and died in 
the same spot, near the bones of one's ancestors, and the 
mobility of the period encroached even upon them. 
Circumstances had changed since the close of the Revolution, 
an epoch of prosperity for the family, and the father came 
to try his luck in Brooklyn where at that time there was 
much building. The Whitmans remained in town for twelve 
years, during which the carpenter followed his trade with 
varying fortune, without ever becoming rich, to the time 
when a grave illness of the mother recalled them to the 
country. 

The household of three children — Walt was the second 
and a fourth was soon to be born — settled in Front Street 
at the water's edge, not far from "New Ferry" which plied 
between Brooklyn and New York. It was probable that 
Walter Whitman speculated in his work, by mortgaging or 
reselling the little houses which he built: the frequent re- 
iBueke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 35. 

29 






30 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK ' 

movals of his family seemed to indicate this. 1 After a stay 
in Cranberry Street they removed to "a pretty house" says 
the poet — which the father had built in Johnston Street. 
Then it was to Tillary Street that they migrated. About 
1830 we find them at last in Henry Street. 2 It was thus a 
somewhat nomadic life which the child lived during his first 
years, though these successive habitations followed close 
upon one another. 

Brooklyn at that time, the humble kernel of the enormous 
agglomeration now absorbed by greater New York, was still 
a quiet little village very rural in character. 3 It was there 
that Walt, to use his own words, quitted his frocks and be- 
came a boy bold enough to begin exploring the surrounding 
world, and to adventure alone into the streets, as far even 
as the store of the corner grocer, who later became mayor. 
He seems to have manifested very early independent and 
vagabond instincts. He was often seen on the neighbouring 
ferry whose employees took a fancy to the little fellow who 
went aboard and made a tour with them. The child already 
yielded to the attraction of moving ships which after were to 
inspire him with a veritable passion. He watched with 
astonished eyes the horses which so drolly stepped round and 
round in the centre of the boat to produce the motive force. 
It was at the turning of an epoch, and the first steamboat 
had yet to be used in the service. 

Thus from the age that he could take to his little legs he 
lived the carefree, independent, dawdling life, life in the open 
with all its risks, a child of the people who blossoms on the 
streets, drawn to places by his awakening intelligence, the 
same obscure instinct of migration, of curiosity and adven- 
ture which animates primitive humanity in its flight across 
the world; however futile may seem the remark, in reality 
it is not, for it matters in the future development of the in- 
dividual that the first memories of his childhood are not 

iH. B. Binns: Life of Walt Whitman, pp. 13-14. 
^Complete Prose, p. 9. Bucke: Walt Whitman, p. 8. 
Complete Prose, pp. 10-11. 



YEARS OF YOUTH AND APPRENTICESHIP 31 

linked with ideas of confinement, and of subordination to a 
narrow surveillance. Sixty years later Walt still kept vivid 
these impressions of his life as a boy, scarcely out of his 
mother's arms. 

This is the place for an incident of his fifth year, a type of 
anecdote often found in the youth of men of genius, as if to 
mark them with the sign of their predestination. John Bur- 
roughs has told it for us: 

On the visit of General Lafayette to this country, in 1824, he came over 
to Brooklyn in state and rode through the city. The children of the schools 
turn'd out to join in the welcome. An edifice for a free public library for 
youths was just then commencing and Lafayette consented to stop on his 
way and lay the corner-stone. Numerous children arriving on the ground, 
where a huge irregular excavation for the building was already dug, sur- 
rounded the heaps of rough stone, several gentlemen assisted in lifting the 
children to safe or convenient spots to see the ceremony. Among the rest, 
Lafayette, also helping the children, took up the five-year-old Walt Whit- 
man, and pressing the child a moment to his breast, and giving him a kiss, 
handed him down to a safe spot into the excavation. 1 

The poet in his old age still recalled among the memories 
of that distant epoch 2 the arrival of Lafayette in Brooklyn. 
His parents then lived in Tillary Street. The hero with a 
manly figure and a fine face had come by the Old Ferry and 
was received with great pomp at the foot of Fulton Street. 3 

Walt at that time went to school, that is to say to the pub- 
lic school. He made but a short stay — about six years — 
allowed to the children of the common people, forced early 
into practical life. He also frequented a Sunday school at 
St. Ann's. And this primary teaching remained the only 
foundation of methodic and formal instruction of his whole 
life, 4 to which later he added the treasure of his reading and 

tfohn Burroughs: Notes, p. 80. 

Wiary in Canada, pp. 5-7. 

Complete Prose, p. 9. 

4 No other instruction was his till his ultimate passing as student to the Jamaica Academy (Long 
Island) indicated by Bucke, Walt Whitman, p. 22, and which in any case must have been very short and 
almost insignificant. As he taught later at this place, Binns' Life of Walt Whitman p. 33, there is per- 
haps confusion. 



32 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

his studies. The son of the carpenter was not a privileged 
one. 

In 1831 he was employed as a boy in the office of a lawyer 
in Fulton Street, where he was given a fine desk and a window 
nook to himself. His "boss" was very kind and helped him 
with his writing. He moreover gave his little clerk a ticket 
to a big circulating library, — which Walt later called the 
most signal event of his boy life. Then he plunged with de- 
light into every kind of romance: the entire series of Thou- 
sand and One Nights he went through; then the novels and 
poems of Walter Scott, without counting other marvels. 1 It 
was a veritable feast. Next he was placed with a doctor, 
likewise as errand boy. At fourteen it was time to decide 
upon a business and he entered as apprentice the composing 
room of a weekly paper, the Long Island Patriot, to learn 
the printer's trade. At last he hit upon his work, for through 
all the ups and downs of his many-sided life it was in printing 
offices that he long found his principal occupation. 

The proprietor of the Patriot, S. E. Clements, paid atten- 
tion to his apprentices and sometimes took Walt out walk- 
ing: on Sunday he conducted them to a church which re- 
sembled a fortress. In the office Walt had for colleague and 
friend an old revolutionary character who had seen Wash- 
ington and who recounted for him many stories of heroic 
times. After that, he worked on the Long Island Star, the 
journal of Alden Spooner, 2 who later recollected his appren- 
tice as a notably idle boy: 3 epithet which Walt was to en- 
counter the whole of his life, very unjustly, however. 

Prom these years the poet remembered vividly an im- 
pression made upon the mind of the boy observer. One 
day in January, when walking on Broadway, he saw "a bent, 
feeble but stout-built very old man, bearded, swathed in 
rich furs, with a great ermine cap on his head, led and as- 



l Complete Prose, p. 9. 

2 Complete Prose, p. 10. 

3 H. B. Binns: Life of Walt Whitman, p. SO. 



YEARS OF YOUTH AND APPRENTICESHIP 33 

sisted, almost carried, down the steps of his high front stoop 
(a dozen friends and servants, emulous, carefully holding, 
guiding him) and then lifted and tuck'd in a gorgeous sleigh, 
envelop'd in other furs, for a ride. Well, I, a boy of per- 
haps thirteen or fourteen, stopp'd and gazed long at the 
spectacle of that furswathed old man, surrounded by friends 
and servants, and the careful seating of him in the sleigh. I 
remember the spirited, champing horses, the driver and his 
whip, and a fellow-driver by his side, for extra prudence. 
The old man, the subject of so much attention, I can almost 
see him now. It was John Jacob Astor." 1 The son of Long 
Island farmers in passing the New York millionaire was petri- 
fied before the revelation of the enormous display of wealth. 

Though living in Brooklyn, during the school and appren- 
ticeship years, Walt did not say good-by to the farm at 
West Hills nor at Cold Spring. Every summer he returned 
to pass his vacations with his grandparents to make pro- 
longed stays with them. It was thus that he came to know 
his gentle grandmother, Naomi, with her quakeress cap, his 
jovial grandfather, Cornelius, and Hannah Whitman, his 
other grandmother. A good part of his childhood and adoles- 
cence was thus passed exploring in every sense the country 
and the borders of the island to the point of feeling them as 
near as if he had not been from them for four years. It is 
he himself we must question in order to know the impres- 
sions which these magnificent months of nature and of lib- 
erty left upon him: 

Inside the outer bars or beach this south bay is everywhere compara- 
tively shallow; of cold winters all thick ice on the surface. As a boy I often 
went forth with a chum or two, on those frozen fields, with hand-sled, axe 
and eel-spear, after messes of eels. We would cut holes in the ice, some- 
times striking quite an eel-bonanza, and filling our baskets with great, fat, 
sweet, whitemeated fellows. The scenes, the ice, drawing the hand-sled, 
cutting holes, spearing the eels, etc., were of course just such fun as is dearest 
to boyhood. The shores of this bay, winter and summer, and my doings 
there in early life, are woven all through L. of G. One sport I was very 

l Complete Prose, p. 12. 



34 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

fond of was to go on a bay-party in summer to gather sea-gull's eggs. (The 
gulls lay two or three eggs, more than half the size of hen's eggs, right on 
the sand, and leave the sun's heat to hatch them.) 

The eastern end of Long Island, the Peconic bay region, I knew quite 
well too — sail'd more than once around Shelter island, and down to Mon- 
tauk — spent many an hour on Turtle hill by the old light-house, on the 
extreme point, looking out over the ceaseless roll of the Atlantic. I used 
to like to go down there and fraternize with the blue-fishers, or the annual 
squads of sea-bass takers. Sometimes, along Montauk peninsula, (it is 
some 15 miles long, and good grazing,) met the strange, unkempt, half- 
barbarous herdsmen, at that time living there entirely aloof from society 
or civilization, in charge of those rich pasturages, of vast droves of horses, 
kine or sheep, own'd by farmers of the eastern towns. Sometimes, too, 
the few remaining Indians, or half-breeds, at that period left on Montauk 
peninsula, but now I believe altogether extinct. 

More in the middle of the island were the spreading Hempstead plains, 
then (1830-'40) quite prairie-like, open, uninhabited, rather sterile, cover'd 
with kill-calf and huckleberry bushes, yet plenty of fair pasture for the 
cattle, mostly milch-cows, who fed there by hundreds, even thousands, 
and at evening, (the plains too were own'd by the towns, and this was the 
use of them in common,) might be seen taking their way home, branching 
off regularly in the right places. I have often been out on the edges of 
these plains toward sundown, and can yet recall in fancy the interminable 
cow-processions, and hear the music of the tin or copper bells clanking far 
or near, and breathe the cool of the sweet and slightly aromatic evening 
air, and note the sunset. 

Through the same region of the island, but further east, extended wide 
central tracts of pine and scrub-oak, (charcoal was largely made here,) 
monotonous and sterile. But many a good day or half -day did I have, 
wandering through those solitary cross-roads, inhaling the peculiar and 
wild aroma. Here, and all along the island and its shores, I spent inter- 
vals many years, all seasons, sometimes riding, sometimes boating, but 
generally afoot, (I was always then a good walker,) absorbing fields, shores, 
marine incidents, characters, the bay-men, farmers, pilots — always had 
a plentiful acquaintance with the latter, and with fishermen — went every 
summer on sailing trips — always liked the bare sea-beach, south side, and 
have some of my happiest hours on it to this day. 

As I write, the whole experience comes back to me after the lapse of 
forty and more years — the soothing rustle of the waves, and the saline 
smell — boyhood's times, the clam-digging, barefoot, and with trowsers 
rolPd up — hauling down the creek — the perfume of the sedge-meadows — 
the hay-boat, and the chowder and fishing excursions. . . .' 

Complete Prose, p. 7. 



YEARS OF YOUTH AND APPRENTICESHIP 35 

The memory of this happy period remained dear as ever 
to the poet, past the period of his virility. Describing the 
southern coast of the isle, fatal to so many ships, he noted 
that, "As a youngster I was in the atmosphere and tradition 
of many wrecks — of one or two almost an observer." Off 
Hempstead beach, for example, was the loss of the ship, 
"Mexico" in 1840 (alluded to as the "Sleepers" in Leaves 
of Grass. 1 Later still he evoked "old Moses," one of the 
freed slaves of West Hills, "a great friend of my childhood." 2 
The sea especially took possession of him at this time with 
its odour, movement, its noises, its vastness. Already at 
this period he was inspired to sing of the sea. 3 The perfumes 
of seaweed and of sea fish clung to him, and he had, he tells 
us, the look of a " water dog." As a certain captain said of 
Walt, " I can smell salt water ten miles away in just seeing 
him." 4 What animal strength and what largeness these in- 
tervals of life, wild, exultant, diffusive of unconscious joy, 
near the sea and on it, were preparing for the individual! 
And we think of these verses in which this reflection of his 
childhood is expressed : 

There was a child went forth every day, 

And the first object he look'd upon, that object he became, 

And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day, 

Or for many years or stretching cycles of years. 

The early lilacs became part of this child, 

And grass and white and red morning-glories, and white and red clover, 

and the song of the phoebe-bird, 
And the Third-month lambs, and the sow's pink-faint litter, the mare's 

foal and the cow's calf, 
And the noisy brood of the barnyard or by the mire of the pond-side, 
And the fish suspending themselves so curiously below there, and the 

beautiful curious liquid, 
And the water-plants with their graceful flat heads, all became part of 

him. . . . 6 

l Complete Prose, p. 7. 
'Id., p, 414. 
\ Vd., p. 88. 

. *0. L. Triggs: Selections, Introduction, p. xxii. 
*Leav68 of Orass, pp. 282-283. 



36 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

Walt at sixteen was one of the employes in a printer's 
office in New York. However, his work — and it was to be 
always thus with him — absorbs him but little. A fever to 
know seizes him. He lives intensely these hours in which 
every generous adolescent burns to measure himself with the 
world. Quivering with intellectual ardour, he devours a 
multitude of novels, and indiscriminately all the books which 
fall into his hands. He frequents lectures in Brooklyn and 
his neighbourhood, and takes an active part in debates. He 
goes ardently to the theatre, as much as his means will 
permit. 1 It is the period of the awakening of all his curiosi- 
ties. Not content to read and to speak in public, he writes 
poems and little novels for reviews and journals. 

It is about his seventeenth year that there appeared in his 
life the first of those brusque interruptions which the Ameri- 
can temperament and spirit of initiative foster. He aban- 
dons his case and reaches his island, where presently he be- 
comes the improvised master of a village school. Without 
doubt the desire to be near his parents, who had left the 
city — other children had come to the carpenter, and the 
birth of the last boy had cost the mother, however robust, 
months of illness — was not remote from this resolution. Ac- 
cording to the custom of that time he "boarded round" in 
the families of his pupils, where boys and girls mingled, often 
the same age as the teacher. The recollection of one of them 
projects a vivid glimmer upon this period of his youth. I 
transcribe it in all its savour: 

I went to school to him in the town of Flushing, Long Island. He 
taught the school at Little Bay Side. We became very much attached to 
him. 

His ways of teaching were peculiar. He did not confine himself to books, 
as most of the teachers then did, but taught orally — yes, had some original 
ideas all his own. I know about that, for I had heard of others who tried 



l Complele Prose, p. 13. 



YEARS OF YOUTH AND APPRENTICESHIP 37 

oral teaching. But the plans he adopted were wholly of his own concep- 
tion, and most successful. 

He was not severe with the boys, but had complete discipline in the 
school. Before and after school and at recess, he was a boy among boys, 
always free, always easy, never stiff. He took active part in games of 
frolic. It seemed his object to teach even when we played. . . . 

Whitman was very fond of describing objects and incidents to the school. 
He would not do this privately, but to all hands. He would give quite a 
good deal of time to any subject that seemed worth while. He was always 
interesting, a very good talker, able to command the attention of scholars, 
of whom, by the way, there were seventy or eighty. Our ages ranged six- 
teen, seventeen, eighteen years old, yet many, too, were young shavers 
like myself 

The girls did not seem to attract him. He did not specially go anywhere 
with them or show any extra fondness for their society. . . . 

Walt was a good story teller. Oh ! excellent; was both funny and serious. 
Did I say he had his own notions how to punish a scholar? If he caught a 
boy lying, he exposed him before the whole school in a story. But the 
story was told without the mention of any names. No punishment be- 
yond that. He had such a way of telling his story that the guilty fellow 
knew who was meant. He would do this in the case of any ordinary 
offence; but, if the offence was grave enough, the whole school was taken 
into the secret. . . . 

My memory of Walt is acute, unusually acute — probably because his 
personality had such a peculiar and powerful effect upon me, even as a boy. 
I had other teachers, but none of them ever left such an impress upon me. 
And yet I could not mention any particular thing. It was his whole air, 
his general sympathetic way, his eye, his voice, his entire geniality. I felt 
something I could not describe. What I say, others will also say. I think 
he affected all as he did me. They have admitted it, yet, like me, can give 
no definite reasons. No one could tell why. Their memory of him is 
exactly like mine. There must be something in it; it is not imagina- 
tion. . . . 

Whitman had dignity, and yet at the same time he could descend to 
sociability. The very moment he stepped across that school door-sill he 
was master. He had authority, but was not severe. 1 We obeyed and 
respected him. 



U"n a little novel published by Walt in 1841 in which he presents a scene of a brutal schoolmaster, a 
characteristic passage is found: "That teacher was one little fitted for his important and responsible 
office. Hasty to decide, and inflexibly severe, he was the terror of the little world he ruled so despoti- 
cally, punishment he seemed to delight in. Knowing little of those sweet fountains which in children's 
breasts ever open quickly at the call of gentleness and kind words, he was feared by all for his sternness, 
and loved by none. I would that he were an isolated instance in his profession." — Complete Prose, 
P. S38. 



38 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

One thing is sure. As far as Walt's goodness of character goes, you can 
report me pretty fully and as strongly as you choose. Even back in the 
school-days, those of us who knew him, his scholars there on Long Island, 
felt, somehow, without knowing why, that here was a man out of the 
average, who strangely attracted our respect and affection. 1 

This testimony, so affirmative and so curious, must be 
placed near that of another Long Islander who was likewise 
his pupil. Interrogated by Doctor Johnston, one of the 
English admirers of the poet, an old farmer, named Sand- 
ford Brown, formulated in these terms the opinion which 
he retained of his old teacher: 

Walter Whitman, or "Walt," as we used to call him, was my first 
teacher. He "kept school" for 'bout a year around here. I was one of 
his scholars, and I used to think a powerful deal on him. I can't say that 
he was exactly a failure as a teacher, but he was certainly not a success. 
He warn't in his element. He was always musin' an' writin,' 'stead of 
'tending to his proper dooties; but I guess he was like a good many on us — 
not very well off, and had to do somethin' for a livin'. But school-teach- 
in' was not his forte. His forte was poetry. Folks used ter consider him 
a bit lazy and indolent, because, when he was workin' in the fields, he would 
sometimes go off for from five minutes to an hour, and lay down on his 
back on the grass in the sun then get up and do some writin', and the folks 
used ter say he was idlin'; but I guess he was then workin' with his brain, 
and thinkin' hard, and then writin' down his thoughts. ... He kept 
school for a year and then his sister succeeded him. 2 

Whether he was successful or not in teaching where his 
ascendant personality and his resources could supplemenl 
his meagre education, Walt kept up for at least three years 
this life of village schoolmaster, interrupted by visits to the 
farm which his parents had retaken since their return to the 
country. He taught at Babylon at the edge of the Great 
South Bay where he used to catch eels and lobsters, at Ja- 
maica, at Woodbury, at Whitestone. 3 It was then that in 



^■Fellowship Papers, 1894. (I. H. Pratt, Walt Whitman, pp 6-10.) 
2 J. Johnston: A Visit to Walt Whitman, p. 70. 
S H. B. Binns: Life of Walt Whitman, pp. 28-29. 



YEARS OF YOUTH AND APPRENTICESHIP 39 

journeying through the island he took possession of it and 
knew its population. In the course of this somewhat no- 
madic life how many firesides, how many divers types — fishers, 
farmers, grazers — he had occasion to visit and to observe! 
He himself called these years "one of my deepest lessons of 
human nature behind the scene and in the masses." 1 

In the interval — he was then nineteen years old — the 
young Whitman realized another of those experiences, the 
sum of which later made for him an incomparable knowledge 
of humanity. He loved to print both literally and figura- 
tively. For the year and a half during which he taught, we 
find him at the head of a journal, the Long Islander, which 
he founded at Huntington, the market town near West 
Hills, and which still stands, after more than sixty years. 
His brother George, who was then ten years older, was co- 
proprietor. Walt was manager, editor in chief, composi- 
tor, pressman, and apprentice, combining in his own person the 
elements of one edition. Despite his multiple occupations, 
the work in the office of the Long Islander did not monopo- 
lize all his time; sometimes the manager could be seen in the 
midst of his friends, with a ring suspended from a ceiling by 
a thread and forcing it to reach a hook ia the wall. When 
the ring was hooked the player won a piece of pie or a five- 
cent piece. 2 Or perhaps he played a game of whist. His 
readers were indulgent and Walt was in no hurry. But 
there were times when he worked uninterruptedly, and again 
when he merely played. He had to be allowed his own way. 
That which undoubtedly satisfied him was that his business 
as printer and his literary talents found opportunity to 
fuse. 

These months in which he printed, edited, and distributed 
the little sheet came to be a particularly happy phase of his 
adolescence, and the following lines express this delight: 



Complete Prose, p. 10. 

J Bucke: In IU Walt Whitman, p. 37. 



40 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

I was encouraged to start a paper in the region where I was born. I 
went to New York, bought a press and types, hired some little help, but 
did most of the work myself, including the press work. Everything seem'd 
turning out well; and (only my own restlessness prevented me gradually 
establishing a permanent property there) I bought a good horse, and 
every week went all round the country serving my papers, devoting one 
day and night to it. I never had happier jaunts — going over to southside, 
to Babylon, down the south road across to Smithtown and Comae, and back 
home. The experiences of those jaunts, the dear old fashion'd farmers 
and their wives, the stops by the hay-fields, the hospitality, nice dinners, 
occasional evenings, the girls, the rides through the brush, come up in my 
memory to this day. 

Others besides Walt kept the memory of this time. Two 
years after the death of the poet, some friends, on a pilgrim- 
age to Long Island, found still some villagers who had known 
the young director of the Long Islander and did not hesitate 
to evoke his figure. Two of the forefathers of the hamlet 
clearly remembered his powerful personality, brimful of life, 
revelling in strength, careless of time and the world, of money 
and of toil, a lover of books and of jokes, delighting to gather 
round him the youth of the village in his printing-room of 
evenings and tell them stories and read them poetry, his 
own and others. That of his own he called his yawp, a word 
which he afterward made famous. 1 

Walt was twenty-two when he left his school and his island 
to return to New York. Other ambitions were stirring 
within him which teaching could not by its nature satisfy. 
Adolescence was at an end and with it years of apprenticeship. 
A vast field of experience was open to him, where we are 
presently to see him expand in contact with men and things 
and reach his plenitude. 

The proofs which we possess of the poet's youth, beyond 
those which he himself tells, and the evidences which we are 
to cite, are of themselves singularly poor. They suffice to 
prove for us that he already possessed an emphatic person- 
ality : the recollection of the first of his pupils is astonishingly 

«L Hull Piatt: Walt Whitman, pp. 11-12. 






YEARS OF YOUTH AND APPRENTICESHIP 41 

significant in this respect. He showed in his face and his 
glances something very powerful and very sweet, that inex- 
pressible quality which emanates from certain individuals 
like an aroma and irresistibly attracts sympathy. Among 
the young men of the village he appeared different, not by 
an essential superiority, but very peculiarly a singular lad 
who avoided grossness of speech, and whom no one could 
induce to drink or to be part of low games. Without the 
shadow of pose, but under the rule of an innate instinct, he 
had a great self-respect which forbade the familiar diversions 
of the gay youth of his own age. 

But above all he was himself. The love of independence 
which possessed him as a boy, the tempestuous discussions 
with his father, little inclined to jest on the subject of au- 
thority, was confirmed with years. He early left home, and 
the experience which he already had of the big city tended 
to fortify his individualistic tendencies. Walt was not an 
enemy of work, far from it, but he was an enemy of work pro- 
longed and mechanical, foreseen and measured like the day 
of a cab horse between the shafts. On this head, he was 
determined to follow his own will and to obey only his own 
instinct. When he by chance helped in the field, he passed 
for a do-nothing, because he was seen, as Sandford Brown 
says, sometimes to put down the scythe, the fork, or the rake 
to stretch under a tree solicited by a thought which was worth 
more than the work of fork or scythe: why resist it since it 
came to him? His Quaker ancestors, did they resist the inner 
call? Even to his family, with whom he always retained the 
most affectionate relations, he remained a puzzle. His sweet 
and intuitive mother, despite the particular bond of tender- 
ness which held her to her second son, did not always under- 
stand him. Something in him escaped her. 

Besides, he was never certain what to do with his life : Walt 
was not one of those adolescents who, their studies and ap- 
prenticeship ended, make straight toward a box which they 
occupy till death. He did not know, he waited, he watched 



42 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

the world about him. In the depth of his heart a sea of con- 
fused desires moved him, and he experienced their delight 
and their torture. Under a happy countenance and a tran- 
quil manner he concealed a very vivid sensibility, and his 
youth already knew profound emotions. 

Walt at twenty years had boundless health and unusual 
strength. He had grown very fast and reached his develop- 
ment at about sixteen years. 1 Tall and broad shouldered, 
he was the living proof that the blood of the Whitmans 
flowed in him pure and plentiful. He already impressed one 
by his appearance of a young athlete, 2 with gray-blue eyes, 
which looked directly at one, a face oval and regular, a com- 
plexion extraordinarily fair, and hair an intense black. 3 

With something of a magnificent abandon, full of anima- 
tion and gayety, great lover of games and adventure, he 
gave himself to them with joyous heart once a pleasure party 
was planned. There was no one more boisterous and more 
turbulent than he when leading a band of young boys. 
Wherever his errant life led him, he was easily the chief. 
Walt was a youth of genuine pluck. Fishing, boating, long 
tramps afoot were his favourite recreation: he would have 
nothing to do with hunting. He was never seen in church. 
There were certain moments when a particular gravity 
spread over his face: and his companions asked if it was in- 
deed the same youth who in a moment exulted in the joy 
of living and abandoned himself totally to the intoxication 
of youth and strength. Already the duality of the man 
was apparent and marked him with a special sign. 

^Complete Prote, p. 16. 

aBucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p S3 

'Bliss Perry: Walt Whitman, p. 9 



PART TWO 
THE MULTITUDINARY LIFE 

New York (1841-1855) 



IV 
LITERARY BEGINNINGS 

However eager we are to see the genesis of such an in- 
dividual, the period of plenitude which opens at the time of 
his return to the metropolis more powerfully allures us. The 
years in New York— whose Indian name Manahatta, which 
means "place around which there are hurried and joyous 
waters, continually," 1 was dear to him — the years in which 
he became conscious of himself, and whence his work has de- 
rived, are the marvellous and unique experience upon which 
his personality rises. It is then that the magnificent and 
loose drama of his life knits, and our attention tightens in 
seeing it live and move. 

Twelve to fifteen years — the long period preceding the 
appearance of his poem — suggest more than can be actually 
verified, a luxuriant life wholly enveloped in a warm light 
reflected by some facts which have come to us. For the 
precise facts of Whitman's life to his thirty-fifth year are 
perhaps rarer than any of its phases. No analyst lived 
beside him to preserve the history of a man who had no his- 
tory, of one who lived lost in the crowd, occupied simply in 
living and absorbing his time. Walt was not revealed to 
himself and to the world. Some autobiographic pages, a 
document here and there, allow us at least to conjecture 
what he then lived through, in the flowering of his manhood. 
Ten lines of a contemporary, an impression from life, quickly 
noted, the description of a gesture or a trait of character, 
many times tell us more of his personality than a journal 
rigorously kept. 



! W. S. Kennedy: Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, p. 64: Diary in Canada, p. 55. 

45 



46 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

Because the information relative to this period is scant we 
renounce here, more than elsewhere, a rigorous following of 
the chronology of events in order to express the general sense 
and the particular nature of an epoch fecund in diverse, in- 
timate, and multiple experience. And we must confess that 
what was undoubtedly very great in these magnificent years 
remains impossible to reproduce and must rest in shadow. 

In 1841 Walt finally quitted his school-teaching and re- 
turned to New York stirred by a new ambition. He had 
edited a journal, as a youth, and the great town opened, 
boundless, before his young desire. A great boy of twenty- 
two who appeared at least twenty -five, of exceptional vitality, 
and a singular assurance, was thus about to be lost in the 
eddies of a crowded and eager city. The city should not, 
however, devour him : it was he who was to absorb it, its men 
and things, its aspects and crowds, its sufferings and joys. 

Walt, in these New York years, lives a mixed life: half 
labourer, half journalist, he followed a trade, solely for a 
living, according to a method (or an absence of method) in- 
variable with him. For five years he worked as compositor 
in printing offices in New York, without allowing himself to 
be absorbed by his daily task. In summer this incorrigible 
idler, this lover of air and of sun, often escaped from the work- 
room to the woods or the shores of his island. And to be able 
to prolong his sojourn there he does not disdain now and then 
to hire himself as a gardener, just as simply as he sets type. 

In returning to New York, Walt had a desire, which with- 
out mastering him — that would have been contrary to his 
disposition — preoccupied him seriously during the five or 
six following years: that of "taking up literature!" For 
Walt was a writer. He had published little tales and poems 
in periodicals. This vocation was affirmed since his four- 
teenth year and he continued in his easy way to follow it 
till he became a new man, a time when all this literature was 
dispersed like a soft smoke on the horizon. 

One would be led to believe, in a life of which one poem 



LITERARY BEGINNINGS 47 

is the soul, the key, the final solution, that its literary be- 
ginnings should have a particular importance. They are 
hardly that with a Walt Whitman. It is the life experiences 
of the period we are now entering which are primary and 
significant in the formation of his personality. The man 
would be diminished in nothing, if he had not published in 
his youth. Nor would he be any greater either. He would 
remain the same to us. His juvenilia are like the sprouts of 
shrubbery which bear no fruit; they may be pulled up with- 
out loss. 

Whitman has told us himself how the idea of writing came 
to him: "On jaunts over Long Island as a boy and young 
fellow nearly half a century ago, I heard of or came across 
in my own experience, characters, true occurrences, in- 
cidents which I tried my 'prentice hand at recording: I pub- 
lished these pages during my occasional visits to New York 
City." Elsewhere, he confides to us his first impressions 
as author: his beginnings were described toward 1832 as 
"sentimental bits" inserted in the Long Island Patriot 
where he commenced his apprenticeship as compositor. 
"Soon after, I had a piece or two published in the Mirror 
of George P. Morris, then a celebrated and elegant journal 
of New York. I remember with what half-suppressed ex- 
citement I used to walk to the big, fat, red-faced, slow mov- 
ing very old English carrier who distributed the Mirror in 
Brooklyn : and when I got one, opening and cutting the leaves 
with trembling fingers. How it made my heart double-beat 
to see my piece on the pretty white paper in nice type." 1 

From that time on Walt persevered. Exactly at the time 
of his arrival in New York a story of his published in the 
August number of the Democratic Review had a vivid suc- 
cess. Death in the Schoolroom — a kind of moral story in- 
spired by his experience as schoolmaster — made a sensation 
and was widely copied in the press. 2 This flattering recep- 



^Complete Prose, p. 187. 

2 John Burroughs: Notes, p. 80; and H. B. Binns: Life of Walt Whitman, p. 83. 



48 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

tion fortified the literary ambitions of the young man. It 
was the commencement of his regular collaboration with 
this review, then in full fashion and in which a pleiad of 
future great men published: Poe, Hawthorne, Whittier, 
Lowell, and Bryant. From 1841 to 1845 the signature W.W., 
or Walter Whitman, frequently appeared in it and the young 
printer gave copy elsewhere. The New World, in whose 
composing room he worked on returning to the city, inserted 
some of his verse. Some sketches, some stories, appeared in 
Brother Jonathan, 1 in Columbian Magazine, in the American 
Review, and in the Broadway Journal, directed by Edgar 
Allan Poe, whom he went to see one day in his office and 
found kind and attractive but subdued and a bit jaded. 2 
He wrote at the same time for journals like the New York 
Sun, Aurora Tatler, Statesman, the Democrat, the Trib- 
une. 3 At that time the publicist in him expended itself youth- 
fully. 

Later, Walt was the last one to be mistaken as to the value 
of these "crude and boyish" pieces. He would have wished 
them in eternal oblivion if he had not feared their surrep- 
titious issue. One day he unwillingly decided to publish 
some of them as appendix to his CollefttA 

A brief examination of these youthful pages is enough to 
explain why he was reluctant to reprint them. They au- 
thorize no hope and prove only what a detestable writer at 
that distant period the poet of the Leaves of Grass proves 
himself. Nothing is more conventional and more mediocre 
than these stories of grandiose idea; their naive and flat form, 
and their melodramatic manner, are intolerable. The greater 
part of them, beneath their pathos and inflation, show an in- 
tention plainly moralistic. Their author, then in the full 
crisis of humanitarianism, sought in literature but a means 



iBliss Perry: Walt Whitman, p. 26. 
^Complete Prose, p. 12. 
Hd., p. 187. 
«W., p. 334. 






LITERARY BEGINNINGS 49 

to vivify instruction. His recent biographer, Mr. H. B. 
Binns, has very closely characterized this phase of his youth: 
"The moral consciousness of Whitman was then predomi- 
nant; he was an advocate of 'causes.' But his moralizing 
sprang out of a real passion for humanity which took the 
former sentiment; sentiment which was thoroughly genuine 
at bottom, but which, in its expression at the time, became 
false and stilted enough to bear the reproach of sentimen- 
tality." 1 

Not but that one may discover, very exceptionally indeed, 
in the banality of these little stories, some ingenious or poetic 
motive, however inevitably spoiled by awkward treatment. 
Thus the idea of the widow scattering flowers indiscrimi- 
nately upon all the graves in a cemetery because she could not 
find her husband's. Sometimes a passage, a line, holds atten- 
tion, because it suggests certain fugitive correspondence be- 
tween the Whitman of five and twenty and the much later 
one. Thus one of his stories, One Wicked Impulse, closes, 
after the ordinary gamut of incidents frightfully tragic, upon 
the curious impression of the guilty one who finds in the 
bosom of nature absolution of his crime. She receives him, 
the assassin, as she receives the most innocent of the sons of 
earth, rejecting no one, admitting the most vile to her com- 
munion. It is truly interesting to find this as the first indica- 
tion of the sentiment, which later is to flower so magnifi- 
cently in the man and his poems — the ardent sympathy for 
the fallen and the pariahs, the full and entire acceptance 
of all outlaws. Phrases like these are like an annunciation: 
"Ah! that good morning air — how it refreshed him — how he 
lean'd out, and drank in the fragrance of the blossoms below, 
and almost for the first time in his life felt how beautiful 
indeed God had made the earth, and that there was wonder- 
ful sweetness in mere existence." 2 



*H. B. Binns: Life of Walt Whitman, pp. 34-35. 

^Complete Prose, p. 344.— see also Bucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 340 (Note); Camden Edition, 
IX, pp. 130-133, 146-148. Bliss Perry: Walt Whitman, p. 24. 



50 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

But how rare are such gleams! The juvenilia deserve en 
masse charitable and purifying oblivion. It is astonishing, 
above all, to find no point of contact between the real man — 
such as he already manifested himself — and his writings: 
what is certain, I believe, is that the latter were but accessory, 
despite the undeniable sincerity of his reformatory ardour. 
In any case, it instructs us but in a mediocre way as to his 
intimate self. 

As for the verse pieces of this period, they are poorer and 
more colourless if possible than the prose. At most only 
one of them, The Blood Price, inspired by his anti-slavery 
passion is really moving, stands out from its colourless com- 
pany. Whitman, after his new birth, inclosed with signi- 
ficant quotation marks the word poesy when he applied it 
to his distant lucubrations, proving all his disdainful pity 
for this pseudo-lyricism. A purely conventional notion of 
the poetic form then possessed him: later he declared how 
much he struggled to free himself from it. 

He went even further. Emboldened by his success as 
story teller and versifier, he wrote, soon after his return to 
New York, a novel. Here likewise the quotation marks 
were imposed, for the term seems a bit pretentious in view 
of this production. Franklin Evans, A Tale of the Times, 
was offered to the world as a "temperance novel." It was 
published in a supplement of the New World, the weekly in 
whose composing room the author worked. The journal 
approved the affair, and the masterpiece — which had been 
written on command and was paid for in advance 1 — was 
announced to the public in a sensational manner, of which 
this is a sample: "Friends of temperance, ohe! Franklin 
Evans or the drunkard. A Tale of the Times, by a popular 
American writer. This novel, which is dedicated to the tem- 
perance societies and to the friends of temperance in the 
United States, will make a sensation. ... It has been 
written especially for the New World by one of the best 

( J H. Traubel: With Walt Whitman in Camden, p. 93. 



LITERARY BEGINNINGS 51 

novelists of the country, with the intention of aiding the 
great work of reform, and of snatching young men from the 
demon of intemperance," etc., etc. . . .* This violent 
acclamation was not vain, for Franklin Evans was a great suc- 
cess and was printed, it was said, to the twentieth thousand. 

The title alone explains its literary type. It is the terrible 
and extraordinary history of a young man whom alcohol 
leads to vice and to all miseries, and who pledges to practise 
in future the strictest rules of abstinence. Its style is flam- 
boyant with a redoubtable odour of Puritan sanctity. Even 
Whitman, this crisis passed, may wish that one would keep 
silent as to this sin of three and twenty. He never spoke of 
nor showed pride in it himself, even at the time it was written. 
When any one alluded in his presence to this "novel" he did 
not hesitate to laugh at it. 2 A short time before his death his 
intimate friends searched everywhere for this old "stuff"; 
the author on learning this told them that he "hoped indeed 
by the grace of God" this search would be fruitless. "I do 
not know how I came to write it," he remarked, "all that I 
know is that I was simply in the raw and the unripe, that is 
all." And he sarcastically pretended that his famous "tem- 
perance novel" was written on the table of a saloon with a 
reinforcement of spirit ous liquors. 

That it was nothing but an intellectual caprice, is possible; 
but it appears doubtful whether Walt was at this time an 
exemplary "water drinker." He was always too richly 
alive and too free to subject himself to an absolute rule. 
But he was passionately interested in the problem of 
hygiene, temperance, and physical culture. The abundant 
notes, 3 belonging to the period of Franklin Evans, confirm 
this: page after page, even treatises, on walking, swimming, 
etc. . . . Lost among this declamatory mass some curi- 
ous paragraphs establish, in spite of everything, a kind of 



l Camden Edition, Introduction, pp. xxiv-xxv; Id., VHI, p. 262. 
*Bucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 39. 
"Camden Edition', Witt, pp. 261-274. 



52 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

concordance between the literature of five and twenty, so 
ardent to espouse "causes," and the later man. The juve- 
nile tone of the following lines proves the man of plenitude 
and of triumphant health, who was in truth the young 
apostle, temporarily embedded in moralism. "What pity 
may we feel for the flabby, lymphatic, half -grown puny crea- 
tures, called men and women, of whom the earth is full ! What 
wonder that such morbid abortions are tempted to kindle 
within their sluggish systems some sparkler of genial life by 
transient exhilaration! . . . God's elixir of life is won- 
drously compounded of sunlight, and pure air and water; 
of the perfume of flowers, of music, and the continual change 
of hours and seasons. We drive each other to quaff the 
fiery fountain which bubbles up from hell by robbing one 
another of the exhaustless animal joy which our Creator 
would pour upon us from all living and moving things. To 
drink to fulness of the nectar which Nature distils is to be 
intoxicated with health! 1 

It is necessary to keep in mind in thinking of the future 
Walt this pitiless disdain of the strong man face to face with 
the feeble one, the man of the cabinet, the dreamer forgetful 
of his body, the neurasthenic, who in the midst of these re- 
proofs he induces to swim, to walk, to exercise with dumb- 
bells, to live in the open air. By this single fragment one 
sees what passion already pushed the young man to defend 
causes from which he afterward turned. Even in his lay 
sermons, Walt by instinct repudiates the prudish and posed 
accent of literature familiar to the family. He could not 
escape from his excessive and generous temperament, and in 
this crisis of moralism he remained fundamentally the being 
of nature described in these lines . From another point of view 
the memory of the lance broken in favour of abstinence will ap- 
pear significant when we reply to the accusations of drunken- 
ness and debauch which were hurled later at the great pagan, 
by malignantly perverting some of his poetical affirmations. 

Wamden Edition, VIII, pp. 263-264. 



LITERARY BEGINNINGS 53 

But of all this preaching literature nothing will last. The 
man issues from it unharmed. It simply demonstrates that 
in the time of his youth certain racial tendencies sought 
expression to later retreat and disappear forever. All the 
Quakers of his line were behind him when he was profuse and 
enthusiastic for the abolition of slavery, and of capital pun- 
ishment, and when he combatted alcohol. "I promptly 
got away beyond all that," he declared one day to his 
friends. But it was a sentiment very strong while it lasted. 1 
How can we doubt it? He had the idea of accomplishing 
great things, and the ardours of apostolate consumed him. 
He recognized quickly that he was deceived as to the way, 
for the venture of Franklin Evans had no successor. Al- 
ready the crowds with their enormous reality circled about 
him, through him; and their contact, warm, electric, to which 
he abandoned himself, prepared the metamorphosis from 
which he would rise a new man. 



Wamden Edition, Introduction, p. xxv. 



THE MAN OF CROWDS 

Let us hasten to see the man live very far from these trifles 
—the work of his early years. Despite his literary aspira- 
tions, Walt is not temperamentally a writer. His real self 
expanded in the open air and in free companionship, in the 
track of the immense inquiry which he slowly pursues with 
the view of fathoming his city, his nation, his time. 

Profound is the word by which Bucke denominated these 
New York years, the time in which the poet received his 
"education." Never has one dreamed of the like. A man 
sprung from the people is about to prove democracy for him- 
self by compassing at leisure the entire scale of sensations 
which a great modern city with its surroundings can offer. 
Endowed with vast and varied appetites, enjoying faculties 
receptive and extraordinarily communal, this tranquil and 
uncommissioned inquirer finds himself in the centre of a 
moving and swarming collectivity, energetic and feverish. 
The particular emotional intensity which this contact yields 
him he will one day report to us. 

With real simplicity Walt Whitman lets us see most of the 
experiences of this boundless time. We shall let him express 
them here in his own words which have a flavour and an ac- 
cent of truth which no translation can supply : 

Living in Brooklyn or New York City from this time forward my life 
then identifies itself curiously with Fulton Ferry, already becoming the 
greatest of its sort in the world for general importance, volume, variety, 
rapidity, and picturesqueness. Almost daily later ('60 to '70) I crossec 
on the boats, often up in the pilot-houses where I could get a full sweep, 
absorbing shows, accompaniments, surroundings. What oceanic currents, 
eddies, underneath — the great tides of humanity also, with ever-shiftii 

54 



THE MAN OF CROWDS 55 

movements. Indeed, I have always had a passion for ferries; to me they 
afford inimitable, streaming, never-failing, living poems of the river and 
bay scenery, all about New York island, any time of a fine day — the hurry- 
ing, splashing sea-tides — the changing panorama of steamers, all sizes, often 
a string of big ones outward bound to distant ports — the myriads of white- 
sail'd schooners, sloops, skiffs, and the marvelously beautiful yachts — the 
majestic sound boats as they rounded the Battery and came along to- 
wards 5, afternoon, eastward bound — the prospect off towards Staten 
Island, or down the Narrows, or the other way up the Hudson — what 
refreshment of spirit such sights and experiences gave me years ago (and 
many a time since). My old pilot friends, the Balsirs, Johnny Cole, Ira 
Smith, William White, and my young ferry friend, Tom Gere — how well 
I remember them all! 

Nothing could be more characteristic than this love for the 
ferries, moving routes between water, earth, and sky, satisfying 
the appetite for motion and space which tormented the heart 
of the young man. Throughout his poems how we see them 
pass and repass with their crowds, with the odour and perspec- 
tive of the water. Standing by the side of the pilot, Walt was 
never weary of the breath and press of the people, above the 
moving waters, seething and rhythmic; one with the great 
natural force; he watched the human tide as well as the 
sea. . . . This endless pageant, combined with the 
odours of the salt air, the noises and colours of the bay, 
plunged him into a strange intoxication. He was wont to 
dilate, and to expand in the presence of the landscape and in 
the thousands of confronting faces, to dream, to be gorged 
with visions, his eye taking in the bay, his meditation en- 
circling the globe. 1 

In the heart of the city another spectacle equally thrilled 
him. It was Broadway, the great central artery of Man- 
hattan, carrying along its pavements the most feverish crowd 
in the world. In the eddies of this human flood Walt was 
wont to plunge every day, watching its continuous move- 
ment with an unceasing and fascinated eye. The tramping, 
the cries, the oceanic murmur, the files of vehicles, the mass 

Complete Prose, p. 11. 



56 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

of faces held for the big curious child, at once both actor 
and observer, an enormous mystery and a whole world of 
beauty. The pulsations of humanity afoot accelerated his 
own life and stimulated him to intoxication. Broadway 
offered him not only the spectacle of anonymous pedestrians, 
but that of notables of the day. " Here I saw during those 
times, Andrew Jackson, Webster, Clay, Seward, Martin 
Van Buren, filibuster Walker, Kossuth, Fitz Greene Halleck, 
Bryant, the Prince of Wales, Charles Dickens, the first Japa- 
nese ambassadors, and lots of other celebrities of the times. 
Always something novel or inspiriting; yet mostly to me the 
hurrying and vast amplitude of those never-ending human 
currents." 1 When Manhattan celebrated some extraordi- 
nary occasion, it was also an event for the lover of "populous 
pavements." At the sight of and in contact with the vast 
sea of crowds, everything of the naive, the infantile, and 
primitive leaped within him as in the presence of a great 
planetary phenomenon. And what a crowd! New York 
on a holiday saluting the arrival of some great celebrity, 
"Manhattan with millions of feet walking upon the pave- 
ments," " with all that indescribable human roar and magnet- 
ism, unlike any other sound in the universe — the glad exulting 
thunder shouts of countless unloos'd throats of men." 2 The 
immense processions with torches, fire works, noise of wild 
bands, at the time of presidential elections, the crowds free 
and abounding. . . . 

To observe the crowd, Walt selected a choice place: the 
seat of a Broadway omnibus, by the side of the driver, from 
where he took in the crowds of the street, as from the pilot's 
cabin on the ferries he overlooked the waters of East River. 
He has told us about those famous omnibus jaunts, the joy 
of his youth and of his mature age, with a picturesque hearti- 
ness from which looks out a youthful, candid soul, marvelling 
at everything: 

^Complete Prose, p. 12. 
Hd., p. 12. 



THE MAN OF CROWDS 57 

One phase of those days must by no means go unrecorded — namely, the 
Broadway omnibuses, with their drivers. The vehicles still (I write this 
paragraph in 1881) give a portion of the character of Broadway — the 
Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, and Twenty-third Street lines yet run- 
ning. But the flush days of the old Broadway stages, characteristic and 
copious, are over. The Yellow-birds, the Red-birds, the original Broadway, 
the Fourth Avenue, the Knickerbocker, and a dozen others of twenty or 
thirty years ago, are all gone. And the men specially identified with 
them, and giving vitality and meaning to them — the drivers — a strange, 
natural, quick-eyed and wondrous race — (not only Rabelais and Cervantes 
would have gloated upon them, but Homer and Shakespere would) — how 
well I remember them, and must here give a word about them. How 
many hours, forenoons and afternoons — how many exhilarating night- 
tikes I have had — perhaps June or July in cooler air — riding the whole 
length of Broadway, listening to some yarn (and the most vivid yarns 
ever spun, and the rarest mimicry) — or perhaps I declaiming some stormy 
passage from Julius Caesar or Richard (you could roar as loudly as you 
chose in that heavy, dense, uninterrupted street-bass). Yes, I knew all 
the drivers then, Broadway Jack, Dressmaker, Balky Bill, George Storms, 
Old Elephant, his brother Young Elephant (who came afterward), Tippy, 
Pop Rice, Big Frank, Yellow Joe, Pete Callahan, Patsy Day, and dozens 
more; for there were hundreds. They had immense qualities, largely 
animal — eating, drinking, women — great personal pride, in their way — 
perhaps a few slouches here and there, but I should have trusted the gen- 
eral run of them, in their simple good-will and honour, under all circum- 
stances. Not only for comradeship, and sometimes affection — great 
studies I found them also (I suppose the critics will laugh heartily, but the 
influence of those Broadway omnibus jaunts and drivers and declamations 
and escapades undoubtedly enter 'd into the gestation of Leaves of Grass). 1 

Of a whole world of joys and emotions there still remains 
one of his favourite pastimes at this period, the frequenting 
of the theatre. From childhood, the stage exercised a real 
fascination for him. Later, when writing for newspapers, 
he was on the free list and profited by the privilege to the 
full. 2 The impression which he received must have been 
profound, and after having written many times in these auto- 
biographic pages his memoirs of the theatre, he reviewed 
them again some months before his death. 

Complete Prose, p. 13. 
na. t B . 13. 



58 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

Walt found before the footlights, as in the promenades 
along the great highways, the sensation of the crowd. The 
vibrant atmosphere of the great hall crowded with listening 
spectators, the electric human thrill which the dramatic 
phenomenon produced, the emotion which reverberated 
from the stage to the audience, the strong magnetism which 
freed this exchange, he felt in every minute cell. One easily 
imagines that the audience was as absorbing as the piece — 
perhaps more. The spectacle which thrilled him was divided 
between the auditorium and the play. One feels, in these 
lines, powerful and peculiar, that sensation of the crowd un- 
der the spell of a theatrical performance and his own wild 
joy in it: 



The old Park theatre — what names, reminiscences, the words bring 
back! Placide, Clarke, Mrs. Vernon, Fisher, Clara F., Mrs. Wood, Mrs. 
Seguin, Ellen Tree, Hackett, the younger Kean, Macready, Mrs. 
Richardson, Rice — singers, tragedians, comedians. What perfect acting! 
. . . Fanny Kemble — name to conjure up great mimic scenes withal 
— perhaps the greatest. I remember well her rendering of Bianca in 
"Fazio." Nothing finer did ever stage exhibit — the veterans of all na- 
tions said so, and my boyish heart and head felt it in every minute cell. 
. . . . Fanny Kemble play'd to wonderful effect in such pieces as 
"Fazio, or the Italian Wife." The turning-point was jealousy. It was a 
rapid-running, yet heavy-timber'd, tremendous wrenching, passionate play. 
Such old pieces always seem'd to me built like an ancient ship of the line, 
solid and lock'd from keel up — oak and metal and knots. One of the 
finest characters was a great court lady, Aldabella, enacted by Mrs. Sharpe. 
0, how it all entranced us, and knock'd us about, as the scenes swept on 
like a cyclone. 1 

At the date given, the more stylish and select theatre (price, 50 cents pit, 
$1.00 boxes) was "The Park". . . . English opera and the old come- 
dies were often presented in capital style; the principal foreign stars ap- 
pear'd here, with Italian opera at wide intervals. The Park held a large 
part in my boyhood's and young manhood's life. 8 ... I saw played 
marvelously at this time all the plays of Shakespere (I read them care- 



Womplete Prose, pp. 13-14. 
8/d., pp. 426-27, 



THE MAN OF CROWDS 59 

fully the evening before.) 1 Actually I cannot perceive anything more 
beautiful than the elder Booth in Richard III or Lear (do not know in 
which of the two roles he was the better), or Iago (or Pescara or Sir Giles 
Overreach, to go outside of Shakspere) — or Tom Hamblin in Macbeth — or 
old Clarke, either in the ghost in Hamlet or as Prospero in the Tempest, 
with Mrs. Austin as Ariel and Peter Richings in Caliban. Other dramas, 
and fine players in them, Forrest as Metamora, Damon or Brutus — 
John R. Scott as Tom Cringle or Rolla — or Charlotte Cushman as 
Lady Gay Spanker in London Assurance. 2 ... (I could write a 
whole paper on Clarke's peerless rendering of the Ghost in Ham- 
let at the Park. 3 . . . There were many fine old plays, neither 
tragedies nor comedies — the names of them quite unknown to to-day's 
current audiences. "All is not Gold that Glitters," in which Charlotte 
Cushman had a superbly enacted part, was of that kind. ... I saw 
Charles Kean and Mrs. Kean (Ellen Tree) — saw them in the Park in 
Shakspere's King John. He of course was the chief character. She 
played Queen Constance. Tom Hamblin as Faulconbridge, and probably 
the best ever on the stage. It was an immense show-piece. . . . The 
death scene of the King in the orchard of Swinstead Abby was very 
effective. Kean rushed in, gray-pale and yellow, and threw himself on a 
lounge in the open. His pangs were horribly realistic. (He must have 
taken lessons in some hospital.) 4 

It was to the old popular Bowery Theatre, where Booth 
and Forrest triumphed before an audience of workingmen, 
that his most moving memories are attached, and this prefer- 
ence for the big drama furnishes a precious index to his char- 
acter and tastes at this time. The elegant society of New 
York and Boston then interdicted these two master actors, 
"probably because they were too robust." 

Recalling from that period the occasion of either Forrest or Booth, any 
good night at the old Bowery, packed from ceiling to pit with its audience 
mainly of alert, well dressed, full blooded young and middle-aged men the 
best average of American born mechanics — the emotional nature of the 



!He wrote elsewhere: "As a young fellow, when possible I always studied a play or libretto quite 
carefully over, by myself (sometimes twice through) before seeing it on the stage — read it the day or 
two days before. Tried both ways not reading some beforehand: but I found I gained most by getting 
that sort of mastery first, if the piece had depth (surface effects and glitter were much less thought of, 
I am sure those times) . . ." Complete Prose, p. 515. 

tProsc Works, p. 22. 

3 Id., p. 423. 

</4.pp, 511-512. 



60 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

whole mass aroused by the power and magnetism of as mighty minds as 
ever trod the stage — the whole crowded auditorium, and what seethed in 
it and flushed from its faces and eyes to me as much a part of the show as 
any — bursting forth in one of those long kept up tempests of hand clapping 
peculiar to the Bowery — no dainty kid glove business, but electric force 
and muscle from perhaps 2,000 full sinewed men — (the inimitable and 
chromatic tempest of one of those ovations to Edmund Forrest, welcoming 
back after an absence, comes up to me this moment). . . .1 can yet 
remember (for I always can for really it is a play) the faces of the leading 
authors, poets, editors of this time who occasionally peered from the first 
tier boxes; and even the great National Eminences, President Adams, 
Jackson, Van Buren and Tyler who made short visits there on eastern 
tours. A little while after 1840 the character of the Bowery as hitherto 
described completely changed. Cheap prices and vulgar programs came 
in. . . . That does not mean but what there was more or less rankness 
in the crowd even then. For types of sectional New York those days — 
types that never found their Dickens or Hogarth or Balzac and have 
passed away unportraitured — the young ship builders, cart men, butchers, 
firemen . . . , they too were always to be seen in these audiences racy 
of the East River and the Dry Dock. Slang, wit, occasional shirt sleeves, 
and the picturesque freedom of looks and manners, with a rude good nature 
and a restless movement were generally noticeable. Yet there never were 
audiences that paid a good actor or an interesting play the compliment of 
more sustained attention or quicker rapport. 1 

The enthusiastic pages which he has given to Booth de- 
note the ineffaceable impression which Walt received from 
the actor who thrilled his youth: "Although Booth must be 
classed in that antique, almost extinct school inflated, stagy, 
rendering Shakespeare (perhaps inevitably, appropriately) 
from the growth of arbitrary and often cockney inventions, 
his genius was to me one of the grandest revelations of my 
life, a lesson of artistic expression. The words fire, energy, 
abandon, found in him unprecedented meanings. . . . And 
so much for the greatest histrion of modern times, as near 
as I can deliberately judge . . . grander, I believe, than 
Kean in the expression of electric passion, the prime eligi- 
bility of the tragic artist. . . . 2 

l Com-plete Prose, pp. 429-30. 
Vd., p. 431. 



THE MAN OF CROWDS 61 

After the theatre whose memories reach back to his boy- 
hood and youth, music was, later, one of the prime passions 
of the man. Music in the least complex form, melody, 
Italian vocalism. "The experts and musicians among my 
actual friends," he wrote in 1891, "claim that the new 
Wagner and his pieces belong far more truly to me and I to 
them. Very likely. But I was fed and bred under Italian 
dispensation and absorbed it and doubtless show it." 1 For 
a nature like that of Walt, Italian music stripped of all in- 
tellectual element, without program or "intentions" was 
still the simple, concrete life. He was not seeking art as reve- 
lation, but wished merely to be swept away with sounds 
by some prodigious singing bird. In the pure and full single 
voice of a virtuoso an unspeakable mystery appeared to him. 
It was for him the supreme efflorescence of a soul delivering its 
secret. "Beyond all other power and all beauty," he wrote 
a little before his death, "there is something in the quality 
and power of the right voice (timbre the schools call it) which 
touches the soul, the abysms." 2 The voice was for the sen- 
sibility of the young man an incomparable revelation, more 
eloquent and more moving than the face. 

Perhaps my dearest amusement reminiscences are those musical ones. 
I doubt if ever the senses and emotions of the future will be thrilled as were 
the auditors of a generation ago by the deep passion of Alboni's contralto — ■ 
or by the trumpet notes of Badiali's baritone, or Betteni's tensive and in- 
comparable tenor in Fernando in "Favorita" or Marini's bass in "Fal- 
iero" among the Havana troupe, Castle Garden. 3 ... I heard, these 
years, well rendered, all the Italian and other operas in vogue: "Somnam- 
bula," "the Puritans," "Der Freischutz," "Huguenots," "Fille d' Regi- 
ment," " Faust," " Etoile du Nord," " Poliuto," and others. Verdi's " Er- 
nani," "Rigoletto," and "Trovatore," with Donnizetti's "Lucia" or 
"Favorita" or "Lucrezia" and Auber's "Massaniello," or Rossini's "Wil- 
liam Tell " and " Gazza Ladra," were among my special enjoyments. . . . 
I yet recall the splendid season of the Havana musical troupe under Mar- 



l Complete Prose, p. 515. 
'Id., p. 499. 
'Id., p. 427. 



62 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

etzek — the fine band, the cool sea-breezes, the imsurpass'd vocalism. . . . 
(The Battery — its past associations— what tales those old trees and walks 
and sea-walls could tell!) 1 

Not only the play and the opera but the concert in all its 
forms, the circus, the exhibitions of the music hall singularly 
attracted this youngster, curious of shows and crowds. The 
singing of black minstrels, the characteristic dancing of Ne- 
groes, popular farces, romances, everything which had a 
taste of the picturesque and of the natural stirred him. Noth- 
ing affected nor conventional in him bridled his candid en- 
thusiasm. He was open to all the impressions dear to the 
crowd. He even belonged, for some time, to an amateur 
theatre and acted parts in which he played many small roles 
and found a fund of enjoyment. 2 

If, of all the actors whom he had known, Booth par- 
ticularly struck him, the famous contralto Alboni exercised 
on him a deep influence. When she was on tour, he went 
to hear her every time she appeared in New York and vicin- 
ity. 3 This copious matron with a voice of the nightingale 
was for Walt a supernatural bird whose trilling filled him 
with ineffable delight. And forty years afterward he wrote 
"I should like well if Madam Alboni and the old composer 
Verdi (and Bettini, the tenor, if he is living) could know how 
much noble pleasure and happiness they gave me, and how 
deeply I always remember them and thank them to this 
day." 4 So strong were the emotions which the singing of 
the diva gave him that he wished to leave the trace of them 
in his poems, where the image of Marietta Alboni ineffaceably 
remains. . . . 



Splendid orb, Venus contralto, expansive mother, 
Sister of the sublime gods. . . . 



1 Complete Prose, 


p. 


H 


Hd. 


, p. 518. 






m. 


, p. 14. 






*Id. 


p. 515. 










THE MAN OF CROWDS 63 

And elsewhere it is visibly to her memory that he dedicates 
these verses addressed To a Certain Cantatrice: 

Here, take this gift, 

I was reserving it for some hero, speaker or general, 

One who should serve the good old cause, the great idea, the progress and 

freedom of the race, 
Some brave confronter of despots, some daring rebel; 
But I see that what I was reserving belongs to you just as much as to any. 1 

One may already know him. This was not a dreamy 
youth, solitary, retired within himself, this Walt Whitman. 
These New York years were a phase of life superabundant, 
expansive, free, joyous, without method or restraint. Neither 
doubt, nor timidity, nor melancholy attenuated the enor- 
mous faculties of this big boy, full of life, attentive and 
merry — in his way — exulting in every experimentation which 
multiplied his contact with things and people, and carefree 
in his enjoyment, like a superb human animal, wild to prove 
his magnificent health. He was no more retired in his living 
than in his thinking. In the open air, among passersby, 
he came to satisfy his thirst for sensation, of knowledge both 
direct and unlooked for, seeking only to grow by the absorp- 
tion of things concrete and experienced. He seemed to take 
possession of a paradise, to inventory a heritage which fell 
to him. Greedily he assimilates this nourishment, plunges 
into materialities, responds with a heart smitten at all the 
mute allurements of his surroundings. These years appear 
like a gigantic gulping of impressions and emotions. 

What surprises and disconcerts at first glance is the uni- 
versality of his sympathies. Nothing in the ensemble of 
human affairs was to him negligible, unworthy of his atten- 
tion. He appeared to have in his constitution of an athlete 
an athletic absorption. Not only was no aspect of life for- 
eign to him, but he proclaimed himself closely identified 
with every thing and everybody. He possessed a catholic 

^Leaves of Qrass, p. 16. 



64 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

instinct which made him recognize the true riches of things 
and of beings immersed in the obscure mass and judged too 
ordinary by passing humanity. The biography of Bucke 
contains an admirable passage which marvellously verifies 
the unique character of these experiences of a man with his 
ear to all the noises of life. We know, moreover, by the word 
of the poet, that these lines were written by himself. 

In the first place he learned life — men, women, and children, he went on 
equal terms with every one; he liked them and they him, and he knew 
them far better than they knew themselves. Then he became thoroughly 
conversant with the shops, houses, sidewalks, ferries, factories, taverns, 
gatherings, political meetings, carousings, etc. He was first the absorber 
of the sunlight, the free air and the open streets, and then of interiors. He 
knew the hospitals, poorhouses, prisons, and their inmates. He passed 
freely in and about those parts of the city which are inhabited by the worst 
characters; he knew all their people, and many of them knew him; he 
learned to tolerate their squalor, vice, and ignorance; he saw the good 
(often much more than the self-righteous think) and the bad that was in 
them, and what there was to excuse and justify their lives. . . . 

True, he knew, and intimately knew, the better off and educated people 
as well as the poorest and most ignorant. Merchants, lawyers, doctors, 
scholars and writers, were among his friends. But the people he knew best 
and liked most, and who knew him best and liked him most, were neither 
the rich and conventional, nor the worst and poorest, but the decent-born 
middle-life farmers, mechanics, carpenters, pilots, drivers, masons, print- 
ers, deckhands, teamsters, drovers, and the like. . . . 

He made himself familiar with all kinds of employments, not by reading 
trade reports and statistics, but by watching and stopping hours with the 
workmen (often his intimate friends) at their work. He visited the foun- 
dries, shops, rolling mills, slaughter-houses, woollen and cotton factories, 
shipyards, wharves, and the big carriage and cabinet shops — went to clam- 
bakes, races, auctions, weddings, sailing and bathing parties, christenings, 
and all kinds of merrymakings (In their amplitude, richness, unflagging 
movement and gay colour, Leaves of Grass, it may be said, are but the 
putting in poetic statements of the Manhattan Island and Brooklyn of 

those years, and of to-day) Walt Whitman expressed the 

happiness of his life thus: 1 

Wandering, amazed at my own lightness and glee. 



iBucke: Walt Whitman, pp. 19-22. 



THE MAN OF CROWDS Q5 

In the vast, limitless field of such an education the sugges- 
tions of life and of instinct remain the sovereign guide. 
Walt flowered according to his own inner law, far from meth- 
ods and admitted conceptions. His culture above all was 
of humanity and grew in direct contact with concrete things. 
What others felt or thought before him, always interested 
this self-educated man least; and he confides to us "that he 
could himself draw better pictures or descriptions than those 
that others made;" 1 he asked of his reading only a comple- 
tory education. However, after all, supreme works of art 
are also realities, and the all-devouring curiosity of the man 
could not leave them outside his inquiry. Had he neglected 
them, his culture such as he conceived it would have been 
limited, incomplete. Moreover, he absorbed some books, 
like all else, by direct contact, forgetting, or rather not wish- 
ing to learn, the judgment of critics. 

Walt read in his own way. He had for a study two 
places which he preferred to all others : the top of the Broad- 
way omnibus with the tumult of the street serving him as 
a set-off, or some nook of the seaside far from any human 
presence. The crowd and the ocean seemed to him better 
companions for the reading of the great masters rather 
than the closed and dull solitude of a room. He called his 
method : proving genius in the open air. "It is," he tells us, "in 
the presence of outdoor influences that I went over thoroughly 
the Old and New Testament, and absorbed (probably to bet- 
ter advantage for me than in any library or indoor room) — it 
makes such difference where you read — Shakespeare, Ossian, 
the best translated versions of Homer, Eschylus, Sophocles, 
the old German Nibelungen, the ancient Hindoo poems, and 
one or two other masterpieces, Dante's among them. As it 
happened, I read the latter mostly in an old wood. The 
Iliad (Buckley's prose version) I read first thoroughly on the 
peninsula of Orient, northeast end of Long Island, in a 



»Bucke: Walt Whitman, p. 21. 



66 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

sheltered hollow of rocks and sand, with the sea on each 
side." 1 

Despite this preference for reading in the open air, he 
passed hours and hours of the winter in the libraries of New 
York. Walt was not rich and could not always procure the 
work which he wished to absorb, but his lungs, accustomed to 
breathe freely, were rebels against the morose and asphyxiat- 
ing atmosphere of reading rooms. Without the appear- 
ance of, and living a life apparently free from every abstract 
occupation, he read intensely and with all his senses. His 
chief care was to keep himself in touch with the thought of 
his time: thus he followed attentively the journals and re- 
views which all his life he preferred to books — except a 
dozen of the eternal and culminant ones which he had medi- 
tated upon and ended in knowing almost by heart. The 
enormous mass of magazine articles pencil marked and 
marginally annotated, found in his room after his death, 2 
proclaims the omnivorous reader that he was, just as curious 
to learn the life of his great confreres of the past, for instance, 
as to assimilate the geography, the scientific ideas or facts of 
daily life. There was nothing a priori in his tastes as reader : he 
proposes to be universal student. He copies, extracts, edits, 
analyzes, notes, comments. And all this desultory knowl- 
edge filtered into him like the air, the pageants from with- 
out, the people passing by; he did not "furnish" his mind 
according to the old term; he was assimilated and trans- 
muted. Walt had no desire to be "instructed," to enclose 
ideas in the lobes of his brain, he made only his inquiry into 
life; in this inquiry, books and print enter simply as a part, 
and not the most vital. They were but the accessory, the 
confirmation. When he conversed with any one — artisan, 
sailor, etc., — possessing certain and positive knowledge in the 
domain of personal experience, he noted with care what he 
was listening to. Everything to him was good, everything 



^Leaves of Grass, A Backward Glance, pp. 432-433. 
^Camden Edition, X, pp. 63-97. 



THE MAN OF CROWDS 67 

authentic and real. At the theatre, in the street, on boats, 
in the woods, his constant habit was to record his impressions. 
Notions, apparently the most insignificant, such as the 
mention and description of a cartman whom he had met 
and with whom he was amicably entertained, he registers 
with as much care as he would have given an historical docu- 
ment. The method which he practised with the view of 
gathering and condensing this scattered information was as 
original as his manner of self -instruction; it is thus that he 
put together the debris of geography by annexing maps, news- 
paper articles, leaves of white paper, upon which he recorded 
the ideas received from the mouths of travellers and naviga- 
tors — the whole bound in a thick solid volume, a veritable 
magazine of documents, methodically classified, of all the 
countries of the world. 1 

However absorbed he was by the study of his time and 
his nation, Whitman did not ignore the traces of the 
past. He liked to question former civilizations, the better 
to understand what differentiated them from his own. There 
was exhibited at this time in Broadway a collection of Egyp- 
tian antiquities gathered together by an English physician. 
Walt surrendered himself to a profound study of this col- 
lection by the aid of a "formidable catalogue" and entered 
into it along with the doctor; more than that, he absorbed 
books on ancient civilization on the border of the Nile, "its 
antiquities, its history, how things and scenes really looked 
and how we judge of them now." In this domain, ao when 
he had studied from concrete life, his method was to go 
to the heart of things, to squeeze the subject till he was 
himself saturated. He frequented also the "Phrenological 
Cabinet" of Fowler and Wells, where were gathered "all 
the busts, specimens, curiosities, and books possible in this 
study" 2 and where someone made his phrenological ex- 
amination one day. 

l CaTnden Edition, IX, pp. xvii-xviii. 
i Complei& Prone, p. 517* 



68 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

He was a frequenter of meetings and never failed to hear 
the lecturers of the day — men like Bryant and Emerson. 
He confesses to us that at these mixed meetings, "windy 
and cyclonic," of reform societies before the war, he 
"learned much." 1 For not only was he there as auditor 
but he often spoke. At this epoch Walt, seduced by the 
multiform activities of his age, pretended to play his part 
in politics. At the time he published his little stories and 
verse, that is, between his twentieth and twenty -sixth year, 
his appearances on the platform were numerous. He threw 
himself with zest into the conflict of parties as he did into 
the literary and journalistic world, not as a dilettant, but as 
an apprentice of life, eager to plunge into all its currents and 
to learn by stirring them. He proved apt in filling all these 
human roles, yet the voice of his destiny was not ready to 
be heard just then. When he was schoolmaster in Long 
Island, he was in the campaign in the ranks of the Democratic 
party, which helped the election of Van Buren to the presi- 
dency, and his success as an orator at Jamaica was, they 
say, vivid. 2 Back in New York, he used to frequent Tam- 
many Hall, the celebrated general Democratic quarters 
where he knew the political notabilities of the party. In 
the electoral contest of 1844 which carried Polk to the 
presidency he was very active. But Walt was not of the 
stuif of the partisan. He was too calm and too human to 
be mixed in the raging and vociferous chase of politicians. 
And this crisis passed just as his literary fever passed. 
Never could he mix again in politics; he was content to 
follow attentively its phases, and to keep a live interest in 
what concerned national affairs. He had seen the "machine" 
function near enough to know the "springs of action." 
And he always voted at congressional presidential elections. 
A little later his sympathies carried him into the Republican 
party, to be changed again, at the close of his life, to the 

^-Complete Prose, p. 517. 
2 Bucke: Walt Whitman, p. 22. 



THE MAN OF CROWDS 69 

Democratic. But these fluctuations signify little; they sin- 
gularly prove that he remained always outside of parties. 

One of his joys, perhaps the most natural, the most elemen- 
tary of all, was to converse, no matter with whom, in the 
street, on a boat, on the doorstep of a store, no matter where. 
It was an irresistible need with him to communicate with 
passersby, to search new faces, to learn what the average 
humanity thought, to capture it alive, to fraternize. He had 
to convey a more fervent sense to the word sociability to 
render it adequate to this propensity. A passerby, a type 
of man, an individuality! That for him was the marvel 
of marvels, which he could not but allow himself to contem- 
plate, to study in all its manifestations, to breathe in joy- 
ously. A note of the period of his youth — "A new soul 
which opens to us is better than a novel," is characteristic 
of his insatiable eagerness which incited him to open the 
book of environing lives. In that immense library which 
was New York, one power above all attracted him, that of 
common lives. In them he found his element; though to 
intellectuals, bourgeois, parlourmen, he was little drawn. 
He thirsted for the real man, and for a thinker, or reader: 
moreover, his taste carried him especially, according to the 
word of one of his intimates, "toward beings who have the 
qualities of things of the open air, — the power of rocks, of 
trees, of hills." 1 

He preferred the conversation of his comrades, the coach- 
men, to that of the most learned, because they were rude, 
primitive natures, who brought him news direct from life. 
"They were," he explained one day to his friend Donaldson, 
"as a rule, strong men mentally as well as physically. Some 
were educated, some not; but those who were competent to 
drive a stage for a length of time on such a street as Broad- 
way, New York, for instance, were men of character and in- 
dividuality. 2 Any portion of his papers, the bulk of which 

tfohn Burroughs, Walt Whitman, p. 64. 
2 DonaIdson: Walt Whitman the Man, p. 203. 



70 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

was inventoried after his death and some published, revealed 
paragraphs where he comments on the vivid impression 
which his good friends made upon him. This silhouette, for 
instance: "Peter X . . ., young boy, tall, strongly built, 
coachman. Weight 180 pounds. Natural and sincere 
before me the first time that he saw me. Man of strong will, 
powerful in gross sensations and appetite ... I love 
his refreshing naughtiness, as the orthodox say ... I 
never met a man of whom I could judge in forty minutes, 
more open, ruder, more stubborn, more solid, and freer of the 
mischievous desire to go into society." 1 

In the course of this multiple existence, the sum of people 
with whom he mingled is unimaginable. From the brick- 
layer encumbered at the corner of a road, or the tramp on 
the streets, to the president or the great poet, William Cullen 
Bryant, 2 with whom he took long walks and kept most cor- 
dial relations — hundreds of thousands of interlocutors, who 
crossed his path, are lost in the anonymous crowd, titular 
mistress of this great Lover. And to figure to himself the 
immensity of his inquiry, it is necessary to evoke the hundreds 
of thousands whom he intensely observed with the eye of an 
artist, or a physician, without speaking to them a word, 
and without their apprehending him. Indeed, no one per- 
haps had a more extended knowledge of the masses; and 
we should recognize among his attributes a special sense, 
truly superhuman, of observation, introspection, whose 
power was "limited only by the things to be observed." 

Such was in its general character and seen only under a 
limited number of its aspects the enormous education of this 
uneducated man. Walt had not been able to finish the ele- 
mentary school; he became, none the less, one of the most en- 
dowed men who have trod the earth; made so by the living 
knowledge and perception of humanity, acquired by personal 
contact. "Lost in the cosmopolitan flood" of the swarming 



l Camden Edition, IX, p. 134. 

*0. L. Triggs: Selections, Introduction, p. xxv. 






THE MAN OF CROWDS 71 

city to which this countryman, with a complete faith, vowed 
an enthusiastic devotion, he prepared without knowing it 
that limitlessness of himself which he was immortally to 
define and exalt. 

Like the giant tramps and idlers of literature, the Ham- 
suns, the Gorkis, and the Londons, but with a much richer 
instinct, and in proportions incomparably ampler, he knew 
all life; he lived it boldly before he expressed it. He was one 
of the active units of the great whole which he later will sing. 
The democracy of the New World with its rudeness, its diver- 
sity, its tendencies, clear or shadowy, its furious enthusiasm, 
was ready to be realized in one individual sprung from it, 
worthy to create its type and its representative. 

And what marks above all these crowded, tumultuous, un- 
bridled years is that they flowed in an atmosphere of joy, 
of fecund mirth. They were "good times," full of "amuse- 
ment in the mass" according to his own terms. The in- 
stinct of his Dutch lineage spoke in him. Walt was a happy 
man. With the sensuality of a man strong and healthy, 
every act of his life thrilled him through and through, caus- 
ing him an emotion of pleasure. But the supreme feast was 
to find things so beautiful, so rich, so varied, to sport in the 
marvels, hidden for nearly all, in the heart of the common- 
place and the every day. . . . 



VI 

TO THE SOUTH AND TO THE LOVE OF WOMAN 

It seems rather strange that a man of such queer habits 
could fill at different intervals the post of editor of a news- 
paper. At first view, Walt appeared a man the least con- 
genial to such a task. But the very special conditions of 
American life must be kept in mind and the vast difference 
between the little sheets of that period and the great dailies 
of the present time. An editorial chair of the kind Walt 
occupied at Brooklyn would be thought somewhat similar 
to the work in France of a sub-prefect. 

The truth is that the man proved astonishingly facile 
in adapting himself, at least temporarily, to all his needs. 
He appeared almost indifferent to the kind of work which 
life demanded of him, provided the work respected him. 
That was the essential point. Aside from that, whatever 
came his way, he was prepared to take it for a living so long 
as it left him free for the dearest of his occupations : leisure 
to observe people and things. 

It was at the beginning of 1846 1 that the destiny of the 
Brooklyn Eagle was confided to Whitman. He stayed with 
it two years. "I had there," he tells us, " one of the pleasant- 
est sits of my life — a good owner, good pay, easy work, and 
convenient hours." 2 The Eagle was a modest daily of four 
small pages; its appearance alone conveys the impression 
that its editor must have passed undisturbed days. It was a 
Democratic organ; but this great party, in whose wrangling 
ranks Walt had combatted up to this time, was about to 
split. The editor had irreducible principles, and ranged 



iH. B. Binns: Life of Walt Whitman, p. 42. 
^Complete Prose, p. 188. 



72 



/ 

TO THE SOUTH 73 

himself on the side of the Radicals, notably on the question 
of Anti-Slavery, which he took greatly to heart. Hence 
came quarrels with the orthodox of his party and his chief. 
There was nothing to do but to leave, and that he did. 
Walt wished again to gain his living by writing leading arti- 
cles, but however good the place, the instant that there 
was a question of sacrificing one of his firm, definite con- 
victions to the demands of the "machine" he took his hat 
and looked elsewhere. There was no upsetting a man of his 
character. In the newspaper offices of New York there 
were always cases for him. And like his forefathers in re- 
ligious questions, Walt in politics instinctively took the side 
of the heterodox. Eventually there were other journals. 
After a stay with the Crescent of New Orleans, where we 
shall find him presently, he founded at Brooklyn the Free- 
man, first a weekly, then a daily. And about 1856, after a 
period of manual labour, he was for a time editor of the 
Brooklyn Times. 

This was, after all, but a livelihood. It goes without say- 
ing that Walt did not have the temperament of a journalist. 
Slowly, creditably, just as he manipulated type, he dis- 
charged the duties assigned to him. But the special de- 
mands of the work were too contrary to his habitual serenity 
for him to shine in it. "He had in him too much repose. 
His employers called it idleness." 1 He was truly a singu- 
lar editor. "His home (a modest house in Myrtle Avenue, 
where Walt lived with his parents, then returned to town), 
we are told, was half a league from the office of the Eagle 
near Fulton Ferry, and it may be supposed that he preferred 
to live at this distance that he might enjoy the things to be 
contemplated and observed, which lay in the course of his 
daily walk between these two points. Not only he loafed 
from his house to his office and back again, but even for 
whole days he forsook his desk, went to bathe and to re- 
create, leaving the people to settle their affairs as they could, 

»C. H. M. Skinner: Walt Whitman as an Editor, the Atlantic Monthly, November. 1903, p. 680. 



74 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

without his comment and advice." 1 Indeed it is well un- 
derstood that in the offices of the Brooklyn Eagle the ironic 
legend has persisted of an amateur editor, who, to use a good 
popular expression, "took it easy." Already when he as- 
sumed similar functions on the Daily Aurora of New York, 
some years before, he was remarkable for the same absence 
of feverish haste. He left the memory of a rather fantastic 
editor-in-chief whose most serious occupation seemed to be, 
after a short appearance at his desk, between eleven and 
noon, to glance over the dailies, to go for a lounge of an hour 
or two under the trees of the Battery — studying the sea. 
And also at the Aurora, some divergence of views between 
the proprietor of the Journal and editor-in-chief resulted in 
the departure of the latter. 

Without pretending to find an expression of the intimate 
man which is not there, it is interesting, nevertheless, to run 
through some of the articles produced by the Whitman of 
this period. What characterizes them is the good nature, 
the absence of pretence, and the go-as-you-please, which we 
find to-day in small provincial sheets. He comments on 
the doings of the day, and ingeniously delivers his impres- 
sions, revealing a candour and good sense, avoiding the 
oracular tone, and the inflamed period. His editorials have 
the quality of conversation, and are generally a bit trite. 
The man is not yet awakened: he is still the superficial, 
flowery young writer of the little stories which he printed on 
his return from Long Island. Nevertheless, from this con- 
fused mass, certain paragraphs emanate, in which, at least, 
one begins to suspect the real Walt. When he evokes such 
principles as are dear to him — generosity, humanity, liberty, 
honesty — his prose, ordinarily colourless, becomes animated. 
It is with real warmth that he combats capital punishment, 
treatment of Negroes (a courage which cost him his place 
on the Brooklyn Eagle), luxury of the churches, the authori- 
tativeness of municipal power. Many times he gives counsel 

iC. H. M. Skinner: Walt Whitman as an Editor, the Atlantic Monthly, November, 1903, p. 681. 



TO THE SOUTH 75 

of health to his readers, praises the bath, publishes receipts. 
He espouses always the cause of the individual against the 
law and is not breathless in praising his party. A suc- 
cess which he won during this time was to contribute — 
by conducting in his journal a vigorous campaign for it — 
to the transformation of old Fort Greene into a public park. 
For the welfare of the average man he had at heart, fully. 
Later, toward 1856, when he filled for a brief time the editor- 
ial chair of the Brooklyn Times, he supported vigorously 
£ii important project relative to some new hydraulic ma- 
chines. Of his campaigns it was this that he still showed 
pride in, thirty years later, and he desired the memory of 
it preserved. The interest which he showed in the business 
of Brooklyn, the city of his childhood, appears in a very 
beautiful open letter to the City Council and Mayor, in 
which he adjures them to prove worthy of the great city 
which they administer, to be more comprehensive, larger in 
their rulings, more conformable to the individualistic spirit 
of the American community, reminding them in clear terms 
that they were the agents of the Master, that is to say, 
the Citizen. The noble and proud tone of this address, 
whose firm style is at times remarkable, surpasses the mere 
incident — the Sunday prohibitions — which motived it. In 
the particular inspiration which animates him one feels 
that a new man is in full awakening : it was, indeed, published 
by the Brooklyn Star in October, 1854, 1 at the eve of the 
capital event of the poet's life. Soon it is no longer his city, 
but the unknown world whose continents he is beginning to 
explore, which shall entreat him. 

Until he was thirty and even a little beyond, his collabora- 
tion in journalistic work was varied and abundant. He had 
many friends on the press and could be sure of placing his 
articles. According to the words of his companion and 
first biographer, John Burroughs, he was the part "of the 
light battalion of publicists, who edit, with a facile pen, 

1 Reproduced in the Conservator, November, 1903, p. 135. 



¥6 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

news, reviews, leading articles, no matter what, for pleasure, 
and to gain a living." 1 The big, cordial boy who was 
Whitman had won a place in the new literature and art of 
the city. He belonged for some years to a famous group 
to which one of his biographers, O. L. Triggs, has devoted 
an interesting page: 

While editor of The Freeman, he became one of the leading members of 
the group of New York Bohemians that met nightly at Pfaff's restaurant 
on Broadway to celebrate nationality in literature and art. . . Among 
the Pfaffian group were Fitz-James O'Brien, Fitzhugh Ludlow, Aldrich, 
Stedman, William Winter, Ned Wilkins, George Arnold, Gardette, "Arte- 
mus Ward," Ada Clare, the " Queen," and a score of others. The order had 
been established by Henry Clapp, who transplanted from Paris the moods 
and methods of Bohemia on the pattern of Henry Miirger's Vie de Boheme. 
Of this group Whitman was a recognized leader. Some of his stories were 
written at the hall of meeting. In one of his note-books in a rough sketch 
of a poem, beginning, "The vault at Pfaff's where the drinkers and laugh- 
ers meet to eat and drink and carouse," and closing: "You phantoms! 
oft I pause, yearn to arrest some one of you ! Oft I doubt your reality, sus- 
pect all is but a pageant." In an interview published in The Brooklyn 
Eagle in 1886, Whitman gives an account of the meetings: "I used to go to 
Pfaff's nearly every night. It used to be a pleasant place to go in the even- 
ing after finishing the work of the day. When it began to grow dark, 
Pfaff would invite everybody who happened to be sitting in the cave he 
had under the sidewalk to some other part of the restaurant. There was 
a long table extending the length of the cave; and as the Bohemians put 
in an appearance Henry Clapp would take a seat at the head of the table. 
I think there was as good talk around that table as took place anywhere in 
the world. Clapp was a very witty man. Fitz-James O'Brien was very 
bright. Ned Wilkins, who used to be the dramatic critic of The Herald, 
was another bright man. There were between twenty-five or thirty jour- 
nalists, authors, artists, and actors who made up the company that took 
possession of the cave under the sidewalk. 2 

According to the recollections of an old "Bohemian," 
Whitman differed from the joyous band in one essential 
point, that is, he never became intoxicated. This unusual 
and singular affectation would suffice to give him, in the midst 

iJohn Burroughs: Notes, pp. 80-81, 

*0. L. Triggs: Selections, Introduction, pp. xxvi-xxvii. 



TO THE SOUTH 77 

of a frolic, a certain originality. He was content to empty 
slowly his mug of beer, and in proportion as the company 
became very "gay," his face became more passive and more 
serious. 1 It is in PfafTs cellar that some years later, in 
August, 1860, the novelist, W. D. Howells, saw the poet for 
the first time and thus recalls the meeting: 

I remember how he leaned back in his chair, and reached out his great 
hand to me, as if he were going to give it me for good and all. He had a 
fine head, with a cloud of Jovian hair upon it, and a branching beard and 
mustache, and gentle eyes that looked most kindly into mine, and seemed 
to wish the liking which I instantly gave him, though we hardly passed 
a word, and our acquaintance was summed up in that glance and the 
mighty fist upon my hand. 2 

A quarter of a century later, passing through New York, 
Whitman, mindful of the fine moments of his youth, visited 
his old friend, Pfaff, and the two, leisurely over a bottle of 
champagne in honour of the old "Bohemia," evoked together 
the jolly figures of former t'mes, then dead or disappeared. 3 

At twenty-nine years, Walt as yet knew only New York 
and his native island. It is true he had explored them thor- 
oughly; but the immense continent, of which the metropolis 
was then but the outpost, was unknown to him. The hazard 
of a business engagement allowed him to penetrate the heart 
of America, and to travel over a large part of his country. 
It is not only for the enlargement of his vision that this jour- 
ney is an important date in his life, but also because it agrees 
with a romantic adventure, kept somewhat mysterious, but 
of which we know enough to suspect that it had a serious 
spiritual influence on the man. In fact, this journey was 
doubly fecund and decisive. Walt had already lived and 
absorbed much up to this time: but he returned, plowed 
to the depth of his being, and bearing within him the embryo 



l C. H. M. Skinner: Walt Whitman as an Editor, the Atlantic Monthly, November, 1903, p. 680. 
8 W. D. Howells: Literary Friends and Acquaintances, p. 74. j 
^Complete Prose, p. 181. 



78 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

of a new soul. He acquired the consciousness of a continent 
and a consciousness of himself. 

One evening at the beginning of 1848, while walking, be- 
tween acts, in the lobby of the old Broadway Theatre, Walt 
made the acquaintance of a Southerner, who confided to 
him the project of founding a daily paper in New Orleans. 
He had much capital in the enterprise. The Louisianian 
had come to New York to buy material. They had a drink 
together, and after a quarter of an hour's conversation 
Walt was engaged as editor and received from the stranger 
two hundred dollars to bind the bargain and to pay travelling 
expenses. 1 As he had quit the Brooklyn Eagle and was out 
of a job, the enterprise was excellent. It appeared espe- 
cially admirable, because it offered a providential opportunity 
— "to see the country" and a country curiously, entirely 
new, full of attraction for the Northerner which he was. 

Two days after the interview he started. As the paper 
was not to appear for three weeks, he had plenty of leisure to 
travel by short stages, stopping according to his fancy to 
inspect what attracted him. His brother Jeff, then fifteen 
years old, was his companion. Of his family, he had a par- 
ticular affection for this brother, founded on common tastes. 

They travelled leisurely over Pennsylvania, and crossing 
the Alleghanies, embarked at Wheeling, on a merchant boat. 
From there they went slowly down the Ohio and the Missis- 
sippi, thus travelling through the Central States, land then 
newly opened. They reached New Orleans the twenty- 
fifth of February, 1848, and the first number of the Crescent 
appeared March 5. Walt worked as editor and Jeff as printer. 
Their stay was cut very short — they left toward the end of 
May — the climate being, it appears, unfavourable to the 
health of the younger brother. 2 

Walt nevertheless enjoyed himself to the full in Louisiana. 
To his avidity to know and to absorb the South presented 



^Complete Prose, p. 188. 

*Camden Edition, Introduction, p. xsrxiv. 



TO THE SOUTH 79 

a choice pasture. Its atmosphere delighted him and he felt 
the accord between himself and what he saw. He learned 
that he was as much of the South as of the North. He 
reached there when everything was astir, just at the close of 
the victorious war with Mexico : he was just in time to meet 
General Taylor — future President of the United States — 
and his officers. As for his daily life, it was to all appear- 
ances the same as in New York. He mingled with every- 
body, loved the life of the pavement and the streets for it- 
self; he idly went wherever there was something to be studied 
from life, and he profited by his sojourn by learning the rai- 
son d'etre of Southern life. In a charming page of his me- 
moirs, he tells us the impressions of these three months in the 
South: 

One of my choice amusements during my stay in New Orleans was go- 
ing down to the old French Market, especially of a Sunday morning. The 
show was a varied and curious one; among the rest, the Indian and Negro 
hucksters with their wares. For there were always fine specimens of In- 
dians, both men and women, young and old. I remember I nearly always 
on these occasions got a large cup of delicious coffee with a biscuit, for my 
breakfast, from the immense shining copper kettle of a great Creole mu- 
latto woman (I believe she weigh'd 230 pounds). I never have had such 
coffee since. About nice drinks, anyhow, my recollection of the "cob- 
blers" (with strawberries and snow on top of the large tumblers,) and also 
the exquisite wines, and the perfect and mild French brandy, — (temper- 
ance was already forgotten in 1848) — help the regretful reminiscence of my 
New Orleans experiences of those days. And what splendid and roomy 
and leisurely bar-rooms! ... I used to wander a midday hour or two 
now and then for amusement on the crowded and bustling levees, on the 
banks of the river. The diagonally wedg'd-in boats, the stevedores, the 
piles of cotton and other merchandise, the carts, mules, Negroes, etc., af- 
j forded never-ending studies and sights to me. I made acquaintances 
! among the captains, boatmen, or other characters, and often had long talks 
with them — sometimes finding a real rough diamond among my chance 
encounters. Sundays I sometimes went forenoons to the old Catholic 
! Cathedral in the French quarter. I used to walk a good deal in this ar- 
i rondissement; and I have deeply regretted since that I did not cultivate, 
while I had such a good opportunity, the chance of better knowledge of 
i French and Spanish Creole New Orleans people (I have an idea that 



80 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

there is much and of importance about the Latin race contributions to 
American nationality in the South and Southwest that will never be put 
with sympathetic understanding and tact on record). 1 

In his recollections of this journey Whitman remains 
wholly silent as to an event which was certainly the most 
important of his stay in Louisiana, one which strongly helped 
to print forever the image of the South on his memory and 
on his heart. An attempt to decipher this erased paragraph 
of his life — his relation with a Southern woman — compels 
us to note Walt's behaviour in the presence of women and to 
penetrate deeper into his character. 

Walt was not a lady's man. As adolescent and youth, he 
was marked by his indifferent attitude toward girls. Those 
who knew him when he taught school in Long Island, and 
played games, went to village parties and reunions, tell, in 
recalling these, that women had no special attraction for this 
vigorous fellow, so ardent in enjoying his youth, so prodigal 
of care-free gaiety. No trace of a sweetheart, not the least 
of a love affair, appear in these twenty free years, at once 
wild and reflective, petulant and grave. The singular lad 
was made thus: the torment of love was absent from his 
heart. A woman in his presence was not a being essentially 
different from a man. And there is every probability that 
his youth had been chaste until his return to New York, at 
the age of twenty-two. And it remains certain that women 
and love in the habitual sense did not play in the life of 
Whitman the decisive and important part which they do in 
the life of the average man. 

When he was plunged into the eddies of New York, he 
penetrated all its aspects. The testimony of his friends, and 
that of John Burroughs, for instance, is: "Throughout this 
period — from 1837 to 1848 — without going into details, it is 
sufficient to say that his were all the experiences of life, with all 
their passions, their pleasures, their abandons. . . . Those 



Womplete Prose, p. 440. 



TO THE SOUTH 81 

who have known the poet in these last years, and see in him 
only the calm, gray -bearded man of to-day must not forget, 
in reading his Leaves, that anterior and ardent phase of his 
life." 1 Or the word of Bucke that, "to use the simple and 
hearty old scriptural phrase, 'the love of women' has al- 
ways been, and is in a legitimate sense, one of the main ele- 
mentary passions." 2 What warranted certain people to say, 
for instance, that Walt appeared "to detest women," 3 is 
probably his absolute ignorance of little attentions, of gallant 
speech, of cajoleries by which in all latitudes the amorous pro- 
pensities of the civilized are translated. Walt never flirted, 
never sought feminine society, never armed himself to at- 
tract the favour of his interlocutresses, never published 
abroad the detail of his adventures. His discretion was such 
that he never pronounced nor let fall a word touching his 
relations with any sweetheart whatever. He thus deceived 
the unwary — the simple people of the type who sought to 
deduce from the fact that he never married the indisputable 
proof of his systematic indifference toward woman! Love 
stammering, bashful, interspersed by agony and sighs, it is 
plain that he scorned it with all the despotic indifference of 
the strong, realistic man — even to finding no trace of it in his 
poems. He was a lover, as a Walt Whitman could be a 
lover. 

It is possible though that up to the time of his stay in New 
Orleans he had not perhaps yet experienced his real love. 
Nothing prevents the conjecture that the Louisiana capital 
held for him this surprise and this complementary shock. 
I say conjecture, for the known facts amount to almost 
nothing. They are contained in an avowal of the poet as- 
serting his paternity. In a letter to his English friend and 
admirer, John Addington Symonds, dated August 19, 1890 — 
and which was not published till 1902 by Edward Carpen- 



x John Burroughs: Notes, p. 81. 
«Bucke: Walt Whitman, p. 23. 
»I. Hull Piatt: Walt Whitman, p 12. 



82 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

ter 1 — Walt wrote: "My life, young manhood, my mid-age, 
times South etc., have been jolly bodily, and doubtless 
open to criticism. Though unmarried, I have had six chil- 
dren. Two are dead — one living Southern grandchild, 
fine boy, writes me occasionally : — circumstances (connected 
with their fortune and benefit) have separated me from in- 
timate relations with them." On his death bed, Walt ex- 
pressed one evening to the two most intimate companions 
of his last years, Thomas Harned and Horace Traubel, the 
wish to dictate a kind of deposition, which they were to lay 
aside, in case if (unhappily) a public discussion should arise 
one day of this unknown event of his life, it could be met, 
facts in hand. His most precious wish, however, was that 
no one would broach this subject, the revealing of which 
would cause "surely a grave injury to someone." But the 
old man was then too feeble and could not realize his wish. 2 
The secret was not revealed that evening and was soon car- 
ried with him to his grave. 

In his last years Walt often alluded before his neighbours 
to this fact of his paternity. But he never went far. So 
open and so little accessible to prejudices as he proved, his 
discretion as to the incidents of his private life is unbelievable. 
It was discovered, after his death, that he had torn pages 
from his travel notebook, where may have been found writ- 
ten certain details of his adventure in New Orleans, so de- 
termined was he that this episode should remain in oblivion. 3 
And this discretion, his intimate friends, and even his biog- 
raphers, have religiously respected. 

Mr. H. B. Binns in his book, so rich, so devout, so warm, 
is the first who has attempted to penetrate this mystery, 
which persists in the depth of a life fertile in surprises. The 
suggestive chapter treating of the romance of Walt in 



l The Reformer, February, 1902 (reedited with accompanying article in Ed. Carpenter: Days with 
Walt Whitman, pp. 137-152). 
*H. B. Binns: Life of Walt Whitman, App. B., p. 349. 
«W.: p. 350. 






TO THE SOUTH 83 

Louisiana certainly opens new horizons and strongly pre- 
sents plausible hypotheses. Nevertheless, I hesitate to admit 
all his conclusions. I believe especially that Mr. Binns has 
exaggerated the significance this romance had for the young 
man and his future development. 1 

A probable conjecture-^even assurance — is that Walt 
Whitman when in New (Means, in a sunny and languorous 
country, fell in love with a French Creole or Spaniard — a 
very attractive type of woman. The young journalist must 
have been, at twenty-nine, in the full flowering of his manly 
beauty and strength, splendid as a demi-god of primitive 
Hellas. Of exceptional beauty he was always, but at that 
time youth must have clothed him with irresistible mas- 
culine charm. What more natural than that a Southern 
woman, belonging to some noble family, on seeing him pass 
with such nonchalant and calm demeanour, should fall in love 
with him. It was perhaps the "old dear friend" with the 
charming face, whose portrait was seen on the mantel of his 
room forty years afterward, and of whom he was not in- 
clined to speak, even to his relatives. 2 I am inclined to think 
that she was a French woman. "I walked much in that 
neighbourhood," he tells us in describing the French quar- 
ter — and that it was in her company that he learned the 
words borrowed from the language of France with which he 
has curiously sprinkled his writings. And perhaps the great 
lover was overcome, stirred to his very depth by this new 
complete love. 

For he left undoubtedly to tear himself from the charm of 
sorcerer and the violence of this love. He was afraid of being 
caught in the net of a splendid and redoubtable passion, and 
fleeing the danger, he brusquely broke the bond and re- 
sumed his way North. In a poem, "Sailing the Mississippi 
at Midnight," written perhaps while on his return, there is a 



»H. B. Binns: Life of Walt Whitman, pp. 52-3. 

*H. Traubel: With Walt Whitman in Camden, p. 389. 



84 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

stanza which reminds one of this possible experience of the 
young man: 

But when there comes a voluptuous languor, 

Soft the sunshine, silent the air, 
Bewitching your craft with safety and sweetness, 

Then, young pilot of life, beware. 1 

With his formidable individualism and his rabid passion 
for independence, Walt Whitman protected himself against 
a permanent attachment; he dreaded the yoke, the engross- 
ment, the fixed habit, the restrictions imposed upon his per- 
sonal and solitary manner of living, upon his tastes, his pre- 
dilections. On this point, he frankly interprets himself, 
intimately; 2 he could not endure that a woman should hold a 
place in his life which might fatally lessen the domain of his 
liberty, where he determined to rule an absolute despot. 

The instinct not to allow himself to be absorbed — even by 
a being dearest to him — was as strong as his passion for 
comrades and for crowds. It was less a rule of conduct dic- 
tated by experience than a natural repulsion to every fetter 
and intrusion: at all events, an essential matter with this 
singular and contradictory man. There was no advancing 
toward intimacy with him further than the limit set by him- 
self. Whoever believed that he retained it saw that he had 
not crossed the impassable threshold of his individual self. 
There is no need to imagine romantic incidents and a whole 
secret drama to explain why he kept himself apart from the 
woman he loved. It would have sundered Walt from his 
own will. The only valid reason is doubtless that there is 
no reason. 

. . . I will certainly elude you, 
Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold! 
Already you see I have escaped from you. 3 



^Complete Prose, p. 374. 

sBucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 323; Walt Whitman, p. 60. 

^Leaves of Grass, p. 98. 



TO THE SOUTH 85 

It is sheltered behind this rampart that he defends himself 
against external affairs and notably against the great affair 
of love. Walt Whitman uncrowned of his sovereign egotism 
would not be Walt Whitman. Perhaps without being con- 
scious of it, he refused himself to a single one the better to be 
given in person, and later in a work, to all. Here we touch 
perhaps the heart of the prophet, the predestinate man, 
swayed by the demands of a mission, having to safeguard the 
unwritten rights of his individuality. Happily for this safe- 
guard he possessed his overwhelming repose; after the pos- 
sible intoxication of the hours passed with his beloved in the 
South, the astonishing sang-froid with which he was endowed 
must have returned to him. And do we not discover the 
purpose of his voluntary departure from New Orleans as an 
instinct of defence and of recovery of himself in these lines of 
a short poem of Leaves of Grass, in which it is difficult not to 
recognize a confessional value? 

Once I pass'd through a populous city imprinting my brain for future use 

with its shows, architecture, customs, traditions, 
Yet now of all that city I remember only a woman I casually met there 

who detain'd me for love of me, 
I remember I say only that woman who passionately clung to me, 
Again we wander, we love, we separate again, 
Again she holds me by the hand, I must not go, 
I see her close beside me with silent lips, sad and tremulous. 1 

Wliatever may have been the adventures and their conse- 
quences, these three months in the South, as well as the 
journey going and coming, had a profound influence upon 
Walt of which his later work retains many traces. He 
had discovered a climate, manners, which he liked; and a 
temperament such as the sense of leisure, the coming and 
going, the capacity for joy, which marvellously corresponded to 
his own sensibility. The whole sensuous soul which this de- 
scendant of Quakers hid, vibrated under the vuluptuous and 
warm caress of Louisiana. This stay at the border of the Gulf 

1 Leaves of Grass, p. 94. 



86 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

of Mexico was like the discovery of another civilization, rooted 
from afar, charged with the memory of ages. And in going 
and returning he proved the vastness of his country, the rich 
diversity of these States behind which other states came to 
mass themselves ceaselessly, almost without end, to the 
shores of the Pacific — the thirtieth exactly made its entrance 
into the Union at that precise moment and Mexico, an 
immense territory, was just conquered — these States which 
were being populated with marvellous rapidity, preparing 
the formidable federation of the western world. He re- 
turned with the soul of an American citizen, dilated to 
the country whose vast extent he did not know till then. 
He had observed, compared, seized the different peoples. 
New and altogether powerful emotions enriched the depths 
of his being, and he reached the North ripened, expanded, 
already transformed. Just as the abandoning of his work 
as village schoolmaster had marked the end of his ado- 
lescence, thus the young boy which he still was at his depar- 
ture for the South was transformed into the man. 

Walt had plunged into the heart of the continent and, un- 
doubtedly, into the heart of woman^.^ 

The return was made slowly, and the brothers having some 
savings in pocket, profited by their good luck to penetrate 
still farther the vast interior of their country. Whitman has 
described for us briefly his itinerary, in his papers, a part of 
his travel notes and letters to his family which are in the 
hands of his testamentary executors. They reascended the 
Mississippi and saw its monotonous banks as far as St. Louis, 
where they passed many hours. Another boat, which 
reached Illinois, brought them to La Salle, then by canal they 
reached Chicago. They embarked upon Lake Michigan, 
visited Milwaukee, and Walt, who lost not a single detail 
of the landscape, was ecstatic at the smiling and prosperous 
appearance of the Wisconsin towns, where he would like 
well to have lived. After stopping at Mackinaw, where they 
visited the old fort, the brothers sailed on Lake Huron, 



TO THE SOUTH 87 

touched Detroit, passed to Lake Erie and inspected the 
Canada shore, and after a short stop at Cleveland, debarked 
at Buffalo, end of their long sail. The excursion to the neigh- 
bouring falls of Niagara was in order and they took the time 
to examine them at leisure, like good tourists. Across the 
rich and cultivated country sprinkled with towns and vil- 
lages which form the centre of New York, they reached Al- 
bany, capital of the Empire State, and returned home by 
way of the Hudson. 1 

The return voyage lasted nearly three weeks. For a man 
like Walt, that was enough. He confronted the marvels 
and carried within him the ineffaceable notion of the im- 
mense territory where floated the starry banner. 

Again in Brooklyn with his family — his parents, four 
brothers, still unmarried, and his younger sister lived then 
under the same roof — he resumed his former life. Perhaps 
he earned in the composing rooms the modest means which 
supported him; the relative details of his life at this time 
are more than meagre. In 1849 in Myrtle Avenue he had 
a little print shop in front of which he sold some books. It 
was there that he edited the Freeman, first as a weekly sheet 
then a daily, where he defended radical principles which 
forced him to break with the Democratic Party. The enter- 
prise lasted almost a year. 

Then came a new sudden turn in the career of this undis- 
ciplined man, who did not accept employment except on 
condition of not being burdened by the yoke which it im- 
posed, and avowed himself incapable of remaining long in the 
same place. 2 He took up his father's business, carpentry 
and construction. Walter Whitman, who was now over 
sixty and in poor health, was no longer able to work. 

Now the son took a hand. (It is not probable that he 

had before this manipulated saw and hammer alone.) He 

>egan to build small houses of two or three stories, for 



^Complete Prose, pp. 441-42. 
»Bucke: Wall Whitman, p.' 25. 



88 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

labouring men. When he finished one, he sold it and com- 
menced another, not without enjoying in the interval stu- 
dious leisure on the wild coast of his island. He built on 
his own account, doing all the work with his own hands. 
He left in the morning, like the workman, carrying in his 
little basket his luncheon, prepared by his mother, and 
came back in the evening, the day done. 1 There was at that 
time a great rise in property and building in Brooklyn and 
the occasion appeared propitious to pocket good profits. 
Even Walt, in spite of himself, made money. If he had 
continued to speculate in his houses, he would have realized 
a small fortune. At least any reasonable man, in his situa- 
tion, would have profited by this providential and unique 
chance to hoard money. But Walt was not reasonable ap- 
parently. To the sad surprise of his family, who never un- 
derstood this incorrigible, he relaxed, neglected his work, then 
in 1854 left it altogether, renouncing with gaiety of heart his 
most brilliant prospects. Perhaps he had had the vague 
fear of awaking rich some fine morning and that would have 
been for him the supreme humiliation. He had never done 
anything for money : this time he deliberately affirmed by his 
conduct the most beautiful silent scorn of it. Fortune and 
he had no common language. Walt did not wish her for a 
companion. 

He had also another reason for abandoning his fruitful 
speculations, and this was irresistible and peremptory. It 
is that the careless boy with eyes open large upon life and so 
naively joyous of his magnificent health, the big boy, idler 
and dawdler, in love with the open air and direct contact with . 
men, was big with an idea which came to be the axis of his 
entire existence. Already for many years a transformation 
was slowly operating in the depths of his being. Another 
Walt was about to be born. Something solicited all his 
strength, all his thought, all the instinct of his life: true, he 
did not know what it was, but it was surely something great. 

ij. T. Trowbridge: Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, the Atlantic Monthly, February, 1902, p. 163. 



TO THE SOUTH 89 

To his Intense gaze, the world appeared in a new light and 
he was absorbed in the contemplation of the marvels which 
now were being revealed to him. Since his thirtieth year, 
his inner life was lavishly enriched; the entire man was fo- 
cussing his strength to direct it toward an end which he 
sought to formulate aright. Outwardly he was always the 
son of the carpenter, but in himself, he was no longer such. 
He had hours of gravity and of abstraction when one would 
have believed him transported upon a Tabor. And after 
ardent years passed in listening, in meditating, in accumulat- 
ing, in surmising the result of the phenomenon to which he 
was a prey, he had to leave every other task to consecrate 
himself to this work. For now he knew. His task was 
given him exactly. He prepared himself to face the doing 
of it with the tranquil assurance with which he faced every- 
thing. 

His brother George paints him for us at this epoch, 
living on Portland Avenue in a big house with his fam- 
ily. Walt appeared always the same simple man, affec- 
tionate and singular, who baffled his family by his abso- 
lute lack of practical sense. He 'passed his time in "writing 
a little, working a little, loafing Jl little, he got up late, 
began to write, then went out for the whole day; he 
wrote considerable, one knows not what." For a long 
time he had entirely stopped publishing the sleepy stories 
which he produced in his twenty-fifth year. Everybody 
in the house had regular work except him. 1 Sometimes he 
would go to the most solitary parts of Long Island on the 
shore in the woods and remain there entire weeks. 2 In 1853 
New York saw a great Universal Exposition. Almost the 
whole year Walt passed numerous days and evenings in the 
vast brick and glass building, detailing all the marvels of 
art come from Europe which were exhibited there. This 
great onlooker entered into the thought and sentiment of 



»Bucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 35. 
2 J3ucke: Walt Whitman, p. 24. 



90 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

the Old World, to learn what went on in the continent of his 
ancestors, and he profited eagerly by it. There was not 
only a rich collection of pictures, of sculptures (among them 
the colossal group of Thorwaldsen, Christ and the Twelve 
Apostles), pieces of jewellery, objects of art, but samples of 
wood, minerals, machines of all lands, "every sort of work, 
of product, of labour, coming from the workers of all na- 
tions," 1 which offered him a subject of "inexhaustible study." 
At that moment when he was himself, a prey to inner travail, 
of fusion and of coordination, this inventory of the riches 
of the world and of human labour, with the sense of univer- 
sality and unity revealed in it, particularly fascinated him. 
He felt the powerful pulse of the crowds of visitors under 
the great dome in an accumulation of marvels. With his 
miraculous power of absorbing and speculating, one may 
imagine what a world of knowledge and impressions he was 
able to acquire there. 

That same year he had to take his sick father to Hunting- 
ton. The old carpenter, feeling his decline, was drawn to 
his original home and wished to breathe again his native air. 
Walt was then among the scenes of his childhood. Now, the 
great crisis of his life was about to unfold. The time was 
near. Walt was about to reveal suddenly the reason of his 
coming, to justify his being, his race, and his time. The 
work, adequate to his personality, which he bore within him 
since he had listened to the inner call, arrived at maturity. 
All his life up to this had been but the prelude to the great 
enterprise, which henceforth shall be one with himself. 

Womplete Prose, p. 505, 



VII 
"WALT WHITMAN, A COSMOS" 

Before the personality of Walt Whitman acquires a new- 
meaning and moves about the central event of his life we 
shall halt a moment to consider the man face to face, such 
as he appeared about his thirtieth year. We shall discover 
in scrutinizing some of the intimate depths of his nature that 
the very core of himself seems to indefinitely expand, allow- 
ing glimpses of secret and subtle qualities which one feels but 
does not analyze. 

In this glorious epoch of plenitude he virtually conceives 
his work without having yet planned, expressed, performed 
it. He presents himself as a marvellous type, unforgettable, 
the standard of a race; cell of the American Democracy and 
prototype of the world democracy, the stroller of New York, 
the "well engendered" son of the people, rich in correspon- 
dence with everything and everybody, who realizes a new 
aspect of humanity and marks an age of the world. How- 
ever magnificent, however eternal may be for us his book, 
Walt, the man in the flesh who is about to put it forth, is at 
least its peer at this moment. He is, I repeat, at this period 
of brilliant and warm youth more than at any other, his book 
in life. 

The perfect concordance between the interior Walt and 
his physical appearance is a genuine subject of astonishment. 
Nature had made him marvellously one. The man was very 
tall, broad shouldered, of massive frame, and admirably 
proportioned. His face, before acquiring that incomparable 
Olympian majesty old age was to impress upon it even in his 
portraits, still ravishes us with its rare beauty. His high-arched 
eyebrows marking a large forehead, eyes clear blue, nose 

91 



92 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

very strong and absolutely straight, were framed in a perfect 
oval ruddy face, tanned by the open air, sun, and sea, and 
covered with a beard and a moustache which he never shaved. 
Before thirty — was it after his journey to New Orleans? — 
his black hair became gray, and the contrast of these silver 
threads with the appearance of extreme youth radiating from 
his face produced a very unusual impression. He was from 
head to foot a man who impressed one by his unusual pro- 
portions and the nobility of his carriage. In repose he evoked 
in the ensemble of his person and not by his face alone 
Greek beauty — not that of the decadence which fills our 
museums with its jaded type, but the strong, primitive, 
Hellenic type, that is to say, absolute harmony in rude 
power. In all his physiognomy, a certain primitive bar- 
baric expression was prominent and marked him, among 
city-bred men, as a piece of natural rock in an artificial 
park. 

Never, in the street, was he seen to hurry; though the 
natural grace of all of his movements was extreme, his walk 
was rather heavy and slow, and in moving forward he bal- 
anced his great body like a rhythm which was compared 
to the roll of an elephant. His voice, well modulated, charm- 
ing, was one of his attractions. The eye was not large and 
his mild glance, little expressive of intelligence and vivacity, 
rather colourless, not piercing but absorbing, suggested that 
of the big mammals. The senses were with him of a remark- 
able perfection and acuteness; "he seemed to perceive sounds 
that others did not hear," 1 avowed his brother George. His 
subtle sense of smell, which made him detect a particular 
odour at different hours of the day, approached that of the 
savage and the beast. Everything concurred to make the 
athletic and bearded boy who nonchalantly sauntered along 
the pavements of Broadway a specimen of splendid human 
animality, well equipped, perfectly poised, aplomb, free from 
the blemishes which come to the civilized in expiation of his 



iBucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 37. 



"WALT WHITMAN, A COSMOS" 93 

moral refining. Never man issued more complete and more 
normal from a block of living stuff. 

An invariable and radiant health to the time of his matur- 
ity, when he became an invalid, was like the flower of this 
rare organism. This health was his pride. "I doubt," 
he tells us, "if a heartier, stronger physique, more balanced 
upon itself, or more unconscious, more sound, ever lived, 
from 1835 to 1872 ... (I considered myself invulnera- 
ble). 1 The physical joy which emanated from his person 
was to the verge of copious and excessive so that it was al- 
most embarrassing, according to certain interlocutors. 2 His 
entire body aglow, of a ruddy super-abundance, seemed to 
elude the daily miseries of life. At a period when, after a 
long time, he knew only retrospectively these advantages, 
Walt thus described what he calls health: "In that condi- 
tion the whole body is elevated to a state by others unknown 
— inwardly and outwardly illuminated, purified, made solid, 
strong yet buoyant. A singular charm, more than beauty, 
flickers out of, and over, the face — a curious transparency 
beams in the eyes, both in the iris and white — the temper 
partakes also. Nothing that happens — no event, rencontre, 
weather, etc. — but it is confronted — nothing but is subdued 
unto sustenance — such is the marvellous transformation 
from the old timorousness and the old process of causes and. 
effects. Sorrows and disappointments cease — there is no 
more borrowing trouble in advance. A man realizes the 
venerable myth — he is a god walking the earth, he has a new 
eyesight and hearing. The play of the body in motion 
takes a previously unknown grace. Merely to move is then 
a happiness, a pleasure — to breathe, to see, is also. . . ." 3 

A more than ample frame bears the stamp of his origin 
and, from head to foot, Walt proves himself of the imperial 
race of manual workers, foundation and raison d'etre of the 



^Complete Prose, p. 522. 

2 John Burroughs: Walt Whilman, p. 52. 

^Complete Prose, p. 502. 



94 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

American democracy. Centuries of silent labour close to the 
earth and to the sea, centuries of robustness and open air, 
were necessary to prepare such a representative: it would 
have been impossible to cultivate any city -bred generations 
to produce this tan-skinned Bacchus, drunk with the wine 
of life. It is the truth which the famous portrait of the poet 
confides to us, the portrait which takes the place of the 
author's name in the first edition of his book, and which ac- 
companies it in its transformation. This young man, in 
workman's dress, with an indifferent attitude, and at the 
same time firm, modest, and arrogant, with a calm, decided 
visage, whose glance, cast upon you, questions and follows 
you, appears to have arisen to justify his people, the men of 
the average, the silent heroes of the common people, the 
builders of cities, the modern Atlantes, arrived at the calm 
consciousness of sovereignty. The man in shirt sleeves 
who stands before you, his hand on his hip, his left hand in 
his pantaloons pocket, the felt hat tipped to the side, has 
the absolute attitude of a king. And he is, in effect, the in- 
dividual-king. No court mantle could equal in majesty 
the insolent and natural looseness of his dress, the irreducible 
freedom of his whole figure. He comes as an ambassador 
of a new race, charged to promulgate his life throughout the 
world. 

This portrait etched by McRae after a daguerreotype 
taken in July, 1854, is the document which shows us 
the physical aspect of the man at thirty-five, that is 
to say, at the very time when after years of searching and 
groping, he formulated the first songs of his poem. Dated 
from the same year, another daguerreotype has also come 
to us. It is a portrait bust, whose expression is strange. 
The face contains something of the faun and of the Christ 
at the same time. The epicurean lips which contrast with a 
certain thinness of feature and intense melancholy of glance 
give him an ambiguous expression not met with in another 
portrait. Whatever may be the beauty of this, I believe it 



"WALT WHITMAN, A COSMOS" 95 

will be necessary to consider it as rather exceptional: it is per- 
haps more suggestive than the full-length portrait, but cer- 
tainly less true. Is it possible to recognize there the trace 
of the sorrow which the bringing forth of his book caused 
him, in the course of the years which preceded its coming? 

There exists a kind of commentary on the first of these 
portraits, which, in the definite edition of his book, serves as 
a frontispiece to the Song cf Myself, and it is to himself that 
we owe it. After the most ingenuous of immodesties, the 
poet took care to describe himself in the course of an anony- 
mous article upon himself which he sent to the Brooklyn 
Times, when his poem and his personality were defenselessly 
exposed to lying interpretations. It is both the deep 
coloured sketch which we have of the man at this period 
and his signally veracious transmission to the future: 

Of American breed, of reckless health, his body perfect, free from taint 
from top to toe, free forever from headache and dyspepsia, full-blooded, 
six feet high, a good feeder, never once using medicine, drinking water 
only — a swimmer in the river or bay or by the seashore — of straight atti- 
tude and slow movement of foot — an indescribable style evincing in- 
difference and disdain — ample limbed, thirty-six years (1855) — never 
dressed in black, always dressed freely and clean in strong clothes, neck 
open, shirt-collar flat and broad, countenance of swarthy transparent red, 
beard short and well mottled with white, hair like hay after it has been 
mowed in the field and lies tossed and streaked — face not refined or in- 
tellectual, but calm and wholesome — a face of an unaffected animal — a 
face that absorbs the sunshine and meets savage or gentleman on equal 
terms — a face of one who eats and drinks and is a brawny lover and em- 
bracer — a face of undying friendship and indulgence toward men and 
women, and of one who finds the same returned many fold — a face with 
two gray eyes where passion and hauteur sleep, and melancholy stands 
behind them — a spirit that mixes cheerfully with the world. 1 

Heir of two races which blended in him, Walt owed par- 
ticularly to that of Holland one of the main traits of his 
temperament: his pyramidal phlegm, his equable humour, 

x The Brooklyn Daily Times: September 29, 1855, Reproduced in Bucke's Walt Whitman, p. 195. This 
is but a transposition in prose of a fragment suppressed after the edition of 1860 of the "Song of 
the Broad Axe" (See Bucke: Walt Whitman, pp. 168-169). 



96 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

his feeling for the concrete, his vast optimism, his strict 
propriety, his sensuousness, his propension to affectionate 
comradeship, all came to him by the channel of the Van 
Velsors. Surely the British stock would never have pro- 
duced a being moving through life with that invincible, placid 
manner, nonchalant and idle, the immutable inner content- 
ment, that appetite for things for their own sake, that perfect 
and smiling serenity. To his English ancestors, he is above 
all indebted for his excessive individuality, the terrible firm- 
ness of his moral structure. But that which one must ad- 
mire supremely is the equilibrium which realized in his person 
the qualities of the two races which he fused in the crucible 
of one superior individuality. It strikes us as still more 
strongly evident when we examine as Bucke has done the 
results which the same combination came to in the poet's 
brothers. 

Jesse, the oldest brother, was an incapable, who during 
his life could but do a hired man's work. The third son, 
Andrew, a feeble and mediocre man, disappeared at thirty-six. 
George, the fourth, represented the Whitman type in all its 
purity: virile, loyal, sincere, and righteous. He conducted 
himself heroically during the War of Secession and was made 
colonel. A magnificent character for a man of action, but 
devoid of all imagination and intuition. Jeff, the fifth — the 
favourite companion of Walt on many a jaunt — was, on the 
contrary, a tender, sensitive, divining character who, almost 
without instruction, became by sheer force of work a great en- 
gineer. He inherited the maternal qualities but not the 
robustness of the Whitmans. The last one, Edward, was an 
idiot. A total of three failures and two successes, each in one 
direction — which show us the trials, the gropings, the checks 
of nature in the work of preparing one superior type. Walt, 
alone, the second son, represents the perfect fusion of the 
two races, whose qualities acquire in combining in him 
a new power. This phenomenon of metachemistry Bucke 
has formulated in a page which clears not only the formation 



"WALT WHITMAN, A COSMOS" 97 

of the individuality of the poet, but the genesis of a represent- 
ative man, of all time — thus, in truth, Walt Whitman not 
only possessed the qualities of the Whitman and Van Velsor, 
but these were all intensified in him to an almost superhuman 
degree; he was more a Whitman man than his father or his 
brother George, more a Van Velsor than his mother or his 
brother Jeff, and he possessed besides qualities unsuspected 
in his family to his time. 1 

Truly nature conducted herself royally toward the son 
of the carpenter of West Hills. She realized in him one of 
her absolute masterpieces. And genius, the intensifier par 
excellence, endowed him by a superaddition of creative 
force corresponding to his physical proportions. 

With all this grandeur manifested in the setting of his per- 
sonality as man, Walt practised a simplicity of attitude and 
of manner which did not distinguish him from the people, 
his daily company. One can imagine a youth radiating with 
strength and brilliant natural superiority going through 
life with a grave and distant air; he was a most common- 
place everyday person exempt from any shade of pose, even 
the one of wishing to avoid it. Perfectly at ease with every- 
one, he certainly proved himself closer to the mother of a 
family on the way to market, or to a man handling a broom on 
a Broadway sidewalk, than to a philosopher, a lawyer, or a 
doctor. One has but to read the letters to his mother or to one 
of his uneducated friends to understand all the child-like in- 
genuousness in this great, full-grown, tranquil athlete. When 
he was not abandoned to his genius, Walt preferred the divine 
commonplaceness which made up the life of an ordinary man. 
He never abandons his place in the ranks of the "average," he 
belongs to this with all his fibre, proving it, yet is on .the 
other hand the peer of the greatest interpreters of the race. 

Conventions have so taught us to join the idea of individ- 
ual superiority to distinction of intellect and of manners that 
we cannot suppress our surprise to see him so close to the 

^ucke: Walt Whitman, Man and Poet, Cosmopolis, June, 1898. x>. G89. 



98 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

common run of men, so genuine, conformable to the mass, 
so devoid of the life of comfort. He was endowed with all 
the elementary appetites, which the simplest people mani- 
fest, as "common" and little complex as the peasant or the 
woodpecker, who eats, drinks, and procreates, as free of 
manner as the docker at the harbour, or the mason at his 
work, as free of constraint and of prejudices as the tramp in 
the road. 

He presents himself such as he is with his strong, healthy 
instincts of which he is not ashamed any more than he is 
of the fine body which he does not attempt to adorn. He 
affirms himself such as he is and rejoices in finding himself so 
elemental. Some have called him cynic for this, they who 
have not understood him. And according as he approaches 
maturity, this basic simplicity, whose roots reach far into 
the soil of the race, is but accentuated. "His only eccen- 
tricity is to be free from eccentricity." 1 

The picturesque rustic carelessness of his dress remains 
legendary. During the first years of his life in New York, 
the time when he published his "literature" in the popular 
reviews, Walt, returning from his island, thought well to 
sacrifice to the taste of the day in adopting a frock coat — a 
flower on the lapel — and a high hat. 2 Little by little this dress 
was simplified, and from the time when the idea of the work 
to be accomplished began to torment him, he was never seen 
except clad in an unchangeable suit of gray cloth or serge, 
never black, as he describes it for us. A big-brimmed felt 
hat, convenient for rain or sun, protected his head. More 
often his waistcoat was unbuttoned, and when it was very 
warm, he was seen coming along in his shirt sleeves with as 
much dignity as if he wore a fashionable coat. Despite this 
dress which a bourgeois would have called slouchy, he was 
remarkable for the invariable and scrupulous neatness of 
his linen, a corollary of his minute care of his body. He 

tfohn Burroughs: Notes, p. 86. 
JBucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 34- 



"WALT WHITMAN, A COSMOS" 09 

exhaled the good odour of the bath and of fresh linen. To 
the eyes of certain people, who do not see how this dress cor- 
responds to the whole man, this cool disdain of fashion is 
often interpreted as a simple passion for advertising. 

In matters of eating, he always preferred simple and sub- 
stantial dishes. No masterpiece of the modern kitchen was 
worth as much to him as a clam, which as a child he had 
fished, and according to him the king of the shellfish of his 
island. When he lived by himself he was seen every morning 
to take his knife from his pocket, to cut large slices of bread 
and butter them for his luncheon. He was an extremely 
moderate drinker. He never smoked. To an advanced 
age, he lived either with his relatives, where living was very 
modest, or in a boarding house or in a bachelor's room. His 
errant penates knew only the simple furnishing which a work- 
man would easily have qualified as poor. His needs were 
small in number and those which could be supplied any- 
where; provided that he had a bed, washstand, a small 
deal table and a chair, the rest was indifferent to him. A 
luxurious interior would have seemed intolerable to him. He 
had the aversion of a Quaker for anything that was ostenta- 
tion and form. 1 One recognizes, nevertheless, in all his man- 
ners an ease and liberty entirely opposed to preoccupation 
which rules the narrow and measured existence of a man well 
groomed, shaven, dressed and cared for. He loved to show 
himself barbarian, and he was one in all the force of spontane- 
ity and independence of the word. A fierce instinct kept 
him away from the unchangeable ways traced and followed 
by mere convention. "Society" and its fantasticalities, 
its pretty manners, gestures and speech, smelling of perfume, 
would have nauseated him. Although no living being was 
ever excluded from his sympathies, one sees that the 
effeminate personage jaded and varnished, standing in 
parlours, had upon him the effect of an emasculate, and that 
with all the naivete of the natural man he luimistakably 

"MD. L. Triggs: Selections, Introduction, p. xviii. 



100 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

despised him. The sentiment of social hierarchy was null 
in him. He was a man among men, great and sweet toward 
all. In his daily life, although he did not live it as a real 
Bohemian, he showed himself an irregular, one careless of 
what other men cared for. When he lived with his parents 
in Brooklyn, it was rarely, according to his brother George, 
that he was at a meal on time. If a wish seized him to leave 
the house it mattered little to him that it was the hour that 
the family sat down to the table. He paid no attention to 
them and returned two hours later to sit down and eat. A 
mountain across the doorway would not have changed his 
resolution. He did everything in his own time, when he was 
ready. 1 

As in the time of his youth in which the epithet of idler 
was gratuitously bestowed upon him in his neighbourhood, 
people who judged him according to the ordinary standard 
were inclined to see in him one possessed to do nothing. His 
apparent nonchalance and his slowness baffled their judg- 
ment. In reality he was incessantly active; and when one 
reviews the work of his life, one is struck with the colossal 
task which he really performed. Indeed hard workers can- 
not show the equivalent of labour which the enormous quan- 
tity of documents, extracts, notes, commentaries, analyses, 
projects in every sense, found after his death, suggest but 
feebly. Let us add that this do-nothing not only would 
not depend upon any one while he was an invalid, and paid 
his board regularly when he lived under the family roof, 
but pecuniarily supported his family, his old mother, his 
feeble-minded brother, during a good part of his life, with 
the product of the labour of his hands. 2 But it was useless 
to demand of him feverish work, harsh and breathless. He 
had too much inner repose to break his back. He seemed 
to have all time and never moved except in his own way. 
WTiile others gathered bank notes in their drawer, he ac- 

iBucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 36. 

2Bucke: Walt Whitman, Man and Poet, Cosmopolis, June, '98, p. 690. 



"WALT WHITMAN, A COSMOS" 101 

cumulated, without stopping, treasures of observation, of 
study, of impressions, of emotions, which he would render 
to the world after having imposed upon them the new stamp 
of his self. That was his raison d'etre here below, as to 
others is assigned the alignment of figures in an office or 
the management of materials in a factory. With the ob- 
stinacy of his race, he follows an instinct in refusing to run 
with the dollar hunters. The riches which he coveted did not 
demand pursuits where one suffocated. 

From idler to rake, the transition is natural, and after he 
had published the first songs of his poem, one of the most 
common accusations against him, very grave in America, 
was of being a man of dissolute morals. The appearances 
were at first glance against Walt, whose way of living and 
whose poetic affirmations were too unusual to escape rep- 
robation. Nevertheless, just as in the case of his idleness, 
appearance was a liar. There is not anything in him to be 
praised or blamed, but all evidences established with certi- 
tude that he was a person of great reserve in conduct. In 
associating with women, we have mentioned his extreme dis- 
cretion. He had perhaps a too exalted idea of the sex rela- 
tion to corrupt it. Walt had a singular respect for himself. 
This very high conception of propriety included conversation 
and daily conduct. In his language and in his manners, a 
native distinction allied itself curiously with his perfect 
freedom; never, on his part, a word or a gesture of ribaldry. 
Among his comrades of the street, this behaviour added to 
his prestige because it was never accompanied with any ar- 
rogance, any hypocrisy. Walt was not a prude. He was 
simply, but fundamentally, a clean man in his choice of 
words as well as in his dress. Dirt for its own sake, literally 
or figuratively, was contrary to his instinct. And instinct 
guided the man entirely. 

The strange boy possessed a power of attraction which 
the witnesses of his life, friendly or indifferent, are one in 
declaring exceptional and irresistible. It proceeded not 



102 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

only from the charm of his voice and the cordiality of his 
manners: the physical individual in repose attracted like a 
lover. This particular magnetism, the character and effects 
of which have a fundamental importance in the psychology 
of the poet and the comprehension of his work, prove more 
than the natural aroma of his magnificent physique abound- 
ing in health: it is like the sensible sign of his omnipotent 
individuality. No one knew how to define what he felt in 
his presence: it was something unspeakably great which did 
not depend upon his figure only, his height, or his carriage, 
but which flowed from his total personality. There is not a 
word to qualify this irradiation, which John Burroughs, who 
yielded as so many others, elect spirits as well as uncultivated 
natures, names a "new and mysterious bodily quality." 1 
Every individual, by the sole fact that he lives, exercises an 
attraction, however feeble it may be. It is probable that, 
with Walt Whitman, this attribute was, by reason of his 
formidable individuality, carried to a hundredfold power. 
He attracts as a crowd attracts imperiously by the sole 
fact of living and of passing. In the street the simple pas- 
sersby yielded to this fascination, which he did nothing 
to provoke. At every step, without any exterior reason, 
strangers turned their eye toward the man of elephantine 
movement and looked at him a moment for the unique pleas- 
ure of looking at him, sometimes with a smile of content- 
ment and of silent amity. These yielded in spite of them- 
selves to the mysterious sensation of an unusual presence. 
The obscure ones of whom he made habitual company in 
New York proved him to the utmost and the outcasts, we 
are told, were transformed by his contact. When he was 
the author of Leaves of Grass, visitors quitted him, after an 
interview with him, as if illumined, incapable of thinking 
of any other thing than of him, and the joy of finding them- 
selves near him, 

Orators, philosophers, poets, have exercised a spiritual 

^oliti Burroughs: Notes, pp. 13-14. 



"WALT WHITMAN, A COSMOS" 103 

charm their contemporaries are glad to witness : Emerson, for 
example, positively ravished his listeners. The magnetism of 
Walt's presence was of another kind. It was the outpour- 
ing, not only of an athletic man, but an athletic personality. 
To the visible superabundance of his vitality, his power as 
man, loving all, feeling all, equal to no matter what task, 
united in producing this mystery of nature. There was no 
other mystery than this of one colossal individuality such 
as the world knows but at long intervals. But it is above 
all as the possessor of this power that Walt appears so great, 
before even his work is shaped — his work in which he poured 
out the same magnetism beaming from himself. 

It is easy to see that endowed with such strength of attrac- 
tion, and, above all, tormented himself by the thirst of affec- 
tion, the poet had throughout his life such attachments in 
number and diversity the like of which one rarely sees. He 
was passionately loved by the most frustrate beings as well 
as by noble souls : especially by the primitive and the vigor- 
ous. All along the road of his life he travelled surrounded 
by comrades whose absolute confidence responded to his own, 
kept alive about him to his last day the atmosphere of ten- 
derness which his heart needed and which affected him, he 
said, as the natural phenomena, sun, wind, odour affected him. 
Of all the joys of his life, the supreme joy for Walt was per- 
haps to walk arm in arm with one of these labourers who was 
ignorant of his genius but who felt in his tiniest cells that he 
was a superb companion, that one could not but love him. 
Watch him pass with slow step, a sweet smile lighting his 
bearded face, in these juvenile and impudent lines wher.e he 
himself pictures himself: 

Not a dilettant democrat — a man who is a double part with the common 
people, and with immediate life — who adores streets — loves docks — loves 
to talk free with men, — loves to be called by his given name and does 
not care that any one calls him Mister. Knows how to laugh with 
laughers — loves the rustic manner of workers — does not pose as a proper 
man, neither for knowledge or education — eats common food, loves the 



104 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

strong smelling coffee of the coffee sellers in the market, at dawn — loves to 
eat oysters brought from the fisherman's boat — loves to be one of a party 
of sailors and workers — would quit no matter what time a party of elegant 
people to find the people who love noise, vagrants, to receive their caresses 
and their welcome, listen to their rows, their oaths, their ribaldry, their 
loquacity, their laughing, their replies — and knows perfectly how to pre- 
serve his personality among them and those of his kind. 1 



One of his cardinal attributes was what we shall call his 
Catholicism, giving to this word its original meaning. He 
was all acceptation, neither debater nor calculator. Rep- 
robation was no part of his nature, and dialectics glided 
over him without breaking through his singular indifference. 
At the time when he frequented the debating societies, 
he was interested in oratorical controversies; now as he 
deepened his new self, he put them from him absolutely. He 
was sensible only to the mute arguments suggested by things. 
Reasoning intelligence does not culminate in him: according 
to the famous saying, he was more open to truths which 
proved themselves than to truths to be proved. This may be 
judged as an anti-modern tendency if perspicacity of the first 
order which was his, and his amazing prophetic sense, had 
not largely compensated his dialectic poverty. Walt Whit- 
man was intuition incarnate. "He seemed to be related, and 
as finely related with spiritual facts by his mentality" — we 
can say in reversing a judicious sentence of O. L. Triggs — 
"as he was related to Nature by his exquisite senses and 
physical constitution." 2 He possessed the key which gives 
access to the secret compartments of life, and concrete nature 
seemed to unroll before him like an open book. He heard it 
speak, as he heard his interlocutors. Reasoning would have 
been superfluous. Things themselves published their sig- 
nifications and justified their place. Walt was endowed to a 
marvellous degree with a primitive, ingenuous, total sense 



Another Version of the Article (cited above) of the Brooklyn Daily Times, September 29, '55 — See 
In Re Walt Whitman, pp. 23, 24. 
?Q. L. Triggs:, Selections, Introduction, p. xxvij* 



"WALT WHITMAN, A COSMOS" 105 

of the material. All that was purely intellectual was subor- 
dinated in him to the human and physical element. 1 

This silent absorption of the truth of life showed itself by 
the singular placidity diffused by his whole person. He was 
one who saturated himself slowly with powerful and primitive 
emotions, who enjoyed with a total inhalation sensuous and 
spiritual, with an intense but continent passion, and without 
the least frenzy. Among the dull, care-worn, contracted 
faces which the great city, noisome in its titanic labour, pre- 
sented, Walt paraded his clean and restful figure, beaming 
with the smile of a child. That was the singular thing. 
This imperturbability, however intimately American he was, 
surely made him nearer to the Oriental than to a New Yorker 
of the nineteenth century. He seems to have come from 
another world than the eager city which he sang and exalted. 
He belonged to it with his whole being, yet he was like some 
sojourner from afar, astray on its populous pavements. Per- 
haps he was the prototype of a new kind of American. To 
the eyes of Europeans, the Yankee seems phlegmatic; but to 
his compatriots themselves the phlegm of Whitman was 
baffling. One might say that he partook of the immense in- 
difference of Nature. Events appeared to affect him no 
more than pieces of inorganic matter, and in circumstances 
in which the least excitable of men would have lost his head, 
leaped with indignation, or burst with laughter, he never 
flinched. All idea of pose necessarily out of the question 
(it is enough to have considered Walt but a second to be per- 
suaded that he had not an ounce of pose in his manners), was 
it the lack of nervosity or perfect stability? If we take into 
account the electric impressionability inhering in the pages 
of his work, we are inclined to believe that a miraculous 
equilibrium was the reason of this detachment of the "un- 
affected animal." If you deem the eye of the pachyderm 
stupid, perhaps you will find the look of Walt expressionless 
— even slow and sleepy. The eye of Walt contains a reflec- 
tion Burroughs: Walt Whitman, p. 61. 



108 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

tion of the inner cosmic peace, a little of the divine peace of 
eternity. 

We therefore find ourselves before one of those numerous 
antimonies of which superior beings are made. If, by his 
invincible penchant toward indolent and dawdling absorp- 
tion of life, Walt evokes rather the South, he displays a 
temperament truly of the North, by his absolute empire over 
himself. The same individual who vibrated in his very 
depths to imponderable psychic emotions, and who, in the 
evening of life thinking with a shuddering of heart and of the 
senses, confessed his "numerous tearing passions" was 
capable of Himalayan impassableness. The ardent curiosity 
which drew him toward all aspects of multitudinous life, the 
thrill of his vivid sensibility, all is resolved into that sovereign 
calmness which his friends loved. A man who has pushed his 
investigations in the spiritual domain as far as any one re- 
mains throughout by his attitude the brother of the rumi- 
nants and the hills. And we admire this unusual blending, 
in recognizing how much the world of emotions thus pro- 
claims its affinities with the inorganic world. All the con- 
trasts converged in his being to recompose a synthesis in 
which the universe appeared one in him. There are no more 
water-tight compartments; the material world and the 
spiritual world operate the supreme reconciliation in the 
body and soul of one individual, "Walt Whitman, a 
cosmos." 

Walt's imperturbability is based on an absolute inner 
composure. Not less does the repose of his countenance 
bear the imprint of the life into which he was plunged 
than does this serenity belong to an epoch of restless- 
ness, agitation, and conflict. It should be sufficient to 
assert that he bore within him something very old or very 
new. This elemental and invariable happiness, born of a 
perfect balance of his faculties, not of a heroic resolve to 
"see life en rose," he possessed to an astounding degree. It 
beamed upon him plentiful and spontaneous and evinced it- 



"WALT WHITMAN, A COSMOS" 107 

self as the instinct of enjoying all his other instincts. His 
perfect equable temper was but its reverberation. However 
adverse fortune showed itself, he lost not a jot of his con- 
fidence. Nothing more easy than to be agreeable with him: 
never was he to be surprised into raising a discussion. 
Persons and things were adapted to him as if the great 
Artisan long before had prepared them for his use. His 
sweet, tranquil temper forced all misunderstanding and 
dissipated reserve. He had a clarifying presence. One 
immediately perceived, on meeting him, that all his physical 
majesty was accorded him that he might radiate goodness. 
Beneath this tolerance and this benignity there was no 
mawkishness: he had, one feels, a rock-like will, a terrible 
and unconquerable will, which was the foundation of the 
structure of his personality. When he so wished, he was 
capable of displaying a mute haughtiness, in which suddenly 
culminated all the giant infrangibility of his self. But these 
occasions are rare: the magnificent and warm simplicity of 
his greeting was the rule. 

Any resolution which he had to take never made him seek 
counsel of any one, and he was slow in his decision. Before 
adopting it, he was inclined to examine, weigh, balance, for 
and against it, to allow the arguments to rest and ripen. 
Walt was not impulsive: circumspection was strong in him 
and came perhaps from his ancestors mingling with things 
of the soil. But once his resolution was taken, he would not 
yield, even if he knew that he was wrong. He had by 
heritage a strong dose of patience and stubbornness and 
followed always the "inner call," which his Quaker an- 
cestors recognized as the supreme power in the world. His 
disregard of the opinion of another was total, and for 
him one may say a dead letter. Blame as well as praise left 
him perfectly indifferent. Touching his personal business, 
his reserve was extreme. He imparted his plans to no one and 
he had very decided notions as to what concerned himself 
alone. Toward certain indiscreet questioners — after he had 



108 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

published his poem — he had a manner of his own, not hard, 
but peremptory, to prove that he intended to remain the 
master of his house. 

The entire man was marked with a great natural dignity. 
Vulgar familiarities did not belong to him. Without even 
taking into account the exclusive privacy of his life, of the 
feminine attachments of which no one intimate with him 
received the secret, this communal and fervent being who 
pushed freedom to the baring of himself in his poems, had a 
strong tendency to be secret. He did not permit certain 
locks to be opened. 

Walt not only was not inclined to speak of himself but, 
in general, he spoke very little. His pleasure was to make 
his interlocutors talk, question, learn. Those close to him 
have shown the marvellous listener he was. The role of the 
person silent in conversation fitted him perfectly and that 
something large, open, and natural, which belonged pecu- 
liarly to him invited the confidence and provoked the effu- 
sion of others. 

He cultivated a certain contempt for business — he had 
scarcely any aptitude for it, and he let it be known that no 
matter what business meant to his alert and enterprising 
compatriots, it did not concern him. When a transaction 
did not please him, he refused outright the most tempting 
offers. He ignored concessions. He worked all his life, 
as an amateur, just enough to earn money for his living and 
for that of his mother and infirm young brother, thus passing 
from one business to another, according to the innate in- 
stinct he had of changing pasture, breaking away, taking 
vacation whenever the desire took hold of him to be alone 
in some lost corner of his island, or to make an excursion on 
the sea where some pilot friend tempted him. The joy of 
life, the need of contact with life to feel it pass into him, kept 
him incessantly beyond too absorbing needs. He was 
closed to the notion of money, and he never had the idea, 
before he was fifty, of saving part of his salary. The gold 



"WALT WHITMAN, A COSMOS" ^ 109 

fever which exactly at this time was drawing all seekers of 
adventure to California did not lure him from Brooklyn 
pavements. Another more serious search engrossed him. 
For his family, pecuniary care had all the importance which 
it holds in the families of the poor: for him none. To be 
sure he had to work that his mother might prepare the meal : 
but it was a natural thing, like breathing or walking, and 
he did not trouble to speak of it. The flowers of the field 
are not disturbed by the water which their celestial nourisher 
sends them every day. They wait, because they do not 
doubt. We have noted the one occasion offered him to 
make money and his regal disdain of it. He was truly for 
all men of "good sense," an incomprehensible youth. He 
was not stupid surely, but why so closed to human ambi- 
tions? . . . He had an idea in the back of his head, 
one knows not what, which he followed with a sweet, inflexible 
obstinacy. Is it not strange that a boy like this, without 
the shadow of patrimony, having only his two strong hands 
and his calm, heavy brain to live by, would not allow him- 
self to be drawn by any hope of profit? "He had offers of 
literary work, good offers," says his brother, "and we thought 
that he had chances to make money. Yet, he would refuse 
to do anything except at his own notion — most likely when 
advised would say: 'We won't talk about that', or anything 
else to pass the matter off." 1 There was nothing but to let 
him alone; he was intractable. 

Moreover, his family did not understand him, though his 
evident superiority forced itself upon them. He was so 
different. The father, who certainly never grasped the 
nobility of this great idler of a boy, was compelled like the 
others, after ineffectual ratings, to accept him as nature made 
him. His exquisite mother, bound to him by an infinite 
tenderness, failing in her humble mind to penetrate the 
singularities of the child whom she cherished simply with 
the divine indulgence of love, agreed that after all it was 

JBueke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 33. 



110 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

perhaps "poetry" the odd things which Walt wrote. For 
the entire household he was a mystery. But one sole thing 
could be affirmed, that he was the most affectionate of sons 
and of brothers, and that in some way impossible to define, 
he was superior to all of them. "Not only the family asked 
counsel of him," avows George, his brother, "even when he 
was a mere youth, but the neighbours also. All of us re- 
spected his judgment and had consideration for it. He was 
like us — and yet he was different from us. Strangers, the 
neighbours, felt that there was something in him out of the 
ordinary." 1 

The more we seek to define it the more conspicuous is the 
fundamental ingenuousness of the man. From the depth 
of him awakens the simple, candid, wondering soul of a child, 
come down for the first time on the road of life. He had 
need, like a baby, of tenderness and of caresses, he had need 
to watch the world pass, to know and absorb the slightest 
details. This enormous candour is perhaps, of all the traits 
of his character, that which justifies the most fully all the 
secret reasons of his individuality and of his work. His 
athletic proportions do not forbid us to see, even to his last 
day, the soul of a little child: and indeed curiously allied to 
his strong masculinity one feels in him something of the 
feminine and the maternal. 2 Everything existed to give 
him joy, someone said: indubitable sign of simple hearts. 
He never ceases to contemplate the pageant of the universe, 
and the joy of living persisted with Walt, just as new as on 
the day his eyes opened for the first time upon life. He 
seemed to pass his days enjoying emotions which men in 
maturity have outgrown, and to experience to ecstasy the 
Eden joy of the golden age. A soul of incredible youth and 
of infinite primitiveness was preserved fresh in him to the 
very grave. 

In Brooklyn and on Broadway Walt became a familiar 

iBucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 38. 
8 Jolm Burroughs: Walt Whitman, p. 49. 



"WALT WHITMAN, A COSMOS" 111 

figure. In the street, the passersby recognized his high 
stature, his felt hat, his characteristic gait. Sometimes 
strangers would ask, on seeing him approach, so simple and 
so big, to what class, to what profession, to what earthly 
race, he could possibly belong. The gray of his beard and 
his hair made him appear older than his age, and the most 
varied conjectures were put forth. "Is he a retired sea cap- 
tain ?" asks one, "an actor, an officer, a clergyman? Was 
he once a brigand, or a Negro trader?" "To amuse Walt 
I frequently repeated these odd speculations upon him. He 
laughed until the tears ran when once I told him that a very 
confidential observer had assured me he was crazy." 1 

After all, what was he, this strange boy? Was he journal- 
ist, task master, printer, or some great personage disguised 
in a suit of serge and a big felt hat? One does not know 
what to say. He was Walt, and these four letters ensphere 
all that one can say of him and of other things besides. He 
was like a demigod of Hellas, again a semi-barbarian, which 
a miracle had projected at this time in the heart of an Ameri- 
can city. It is of the poet alone that we must ask an ex- 
planation of himself contained in these verses of "Song of the 
Answerer" : 

Then the mechanics take him for a mechanic, 

And the soldiers suppose him to be a soldier, and the sailors that he has 

follow'd the sea, 
And the authors take him for an author, and the artists for an artist, 
And the laborers perceive he could labor with them and love them, 
No matter what the work is, that he is the one to follow it or has follow'd 

it, 
No matter what the nation, that he might find his brothers and sisters 

there. 

The English believe he comes of their English stock, 

A Jew to the Jew he seems, a Russ to the Russ, usual and near, removed 
from none. 2 



iBucke: Walt Whitman, p. S3. 
2 Leaves of Grass, p. 136. 



112 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

For he had that in him which justified all conjectures. 
With everyone he awakened the sentiment of a close rela- 
tionship. One hesitates to apply to him one epithet more 
fixed than the other because he had the title to nearly all of 
them. He was as exceptional as he was ordinary, and he 
proved the maximum power of the average man and by this 
he escaped all averages. One would say that his family 
extended from the man on the wharf to the President of the 
White House: his sole presence seemed to establish a bond 
between all and reveal universal relations. 

We have stated, in examining his origins, how he was 
Dutch, how strongly he was a son of the Quakers. How much 
more he appears an American by these contrasts blended in 
the crucible of a young nationality which partakes of all the 
races of the Occident! But how much more still, infinitely 
more, he is man, a man-humanity ! 

Walt Whitman was an original product of the American 
soil, a native, an individuality "of new stamp, sui generis" 1 
And it is not vain to recognize in him the prototype of a fu- 
ture humanity, prepared from the foundation of the cen- 
turies to flourish upon a virgin soil and to mark an era of 
the species. 

I am the credulous man of qualities, of ages, of races, 2 

speaks Walt Whitman somewhere in his poem. This char- 
acter of universality is like the final touch which imprints 
his giant personality with a grandeur well nigh superhuman. 
At this point, despite his proximity, he appears to certain of 
his contemporaries like a legendary figure. William O'Con- 
nor, his friend, describes him a little later with the char- 
acteristics of a Voyager of the Ages, making a pilgrimage 
through the world, like Wotan of the Nibelungen. 3 The 
man was so vast, that still inhabiting the earth, he surpassed 
common proportions, and was clothed with immortality. 

iBucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 196. 

^Leaves of Grass, p. 22. 

S W. D. O'Connor: The Carpenter, Putnam's Magazine, January, 1868, p. 55. 



PART THREE 
"LEAVES OF GRASS" 

Brooklyn (1855-1862) 



VIII 
THE GREAT DESIGN 

The climax of this life is before us : it is between the age of 
thirty-five and forty-five that Walt Whitman reaches and 
passes the summit whose wondrous light lives in him and his 
work. Two events control the years of 1855-1865, one the 
publication of the first song of his poem, the other his par- 
ticipation in the Civil War: both, if not of equal importance 
as to his future, at least are fundamental in the history of his 
life. It is between these two dates that the man is full 
grown. We shall now try to elucidate the first one. 

His thirtieth year having been passed, a great change was 
wrought in Walt. In appearance, he remains the same 
man or almost, and his characteristic traits, such as they 
already appeared when he taught school in Long Island, 
remain identical. Nevertheless, although the metamor- 
phosis whence issues the new man who shall occupy us from 
now on was wholly inner, it is discoverable by certain de- 
tails, attentively studied, and the more fruitful if the study 
keep close to him and even in his very setting. Walt 
of the storiettes, Walt the politician and journalist, who in 
living his nonchalant life tried to make his impression upon 
the world in traditional ways, has given place, by disappear- 
ing little by little, to a new Walt who is absorbed more and 
more in the contemplation of things and seeks to render 
more striking and more intimate his communion with life. 

It was a little after his return from New Orleans that he 
experienced the first symptoms of this regeneration. The 
great journey which he had just made into the middle of 
the continent, the atmosphere of Louisiana, the love shock 
which he had undoubtedly experienced — all contributed to. 

115 



116 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

his fecundity. And he listened with a native fidelity to the 
inner call. True he did not know how to distinguish what 
the voice was murmuring. It was a new sensation. He 
would test it further. The spectacles about him which he 
knew so well all appeared to him in new light, and in him- 
self a strange, subconscious power solicited him. 

It was like a measureless expanding of his spiritual being, 
a prolongation of himself into the external world. He im- 
agined himself drawn into a new cycle of existence. The 
people of the village landscape, all environmental things, 
were before him like an enormous book, which he had many 
a time read over, but whose pages appeared to him at pres- 
ent big with meanings heretofore not heeded. With re- 
awakened eyes he set himself to read anew the old every- 
day book, and each of its paragraphs plunged him into 
astonishment. 

I remained like one absent and I listened to the splendid lessons of things 

and the reasons of things. 
They are so splendid that I nudge myself to listen. 
I do not know what that may be which I hear — I do not know how to 

say it to myself — it is all so marvelous. 

Then a religious sense of life filters into him to the full. 
He must seize the suggestions which haunt him and wait in 
the expectation of the phenomenon at work within him. 
Although he perceives something entrancing, the final sensa- 
tion was long confused. At the same time, an "imperious 
conviction" forced him to formulate everything which 
stirred within him. He perceived clearly an impulse. He 
felt himself called. He had something to do or to say; 
something must come forth. He was the interpreter of a 
revelation, he was called to a mission. As to that, no doubt! 
The powers imparted to him were such that he could not dis- 
obey, "as total and irresistible as those which make the sea 
flow or the globe revolve." 1 A revelation, a mission. . . . 

, Wompleie Prose, p. 268. 



THE GREAT DESIGN 117 

But what? Under what form? There was the uncer- 
tainty. How express the inexpressible which was buzzing 
at his ears, the new passion which carried him away? By 
what words or by what acts interpret the whisper, powerful 
and sweet, of the thousand confused voices of this sea of 
impressions which was breaking over him? He had to lis- 
ten, to see, to search. . . . The daimon which had 
taken possession of his soul would not let him escape, it 
would show him the way to deliver his message. 

In awaiting the sign which should be his destiny Walt 
plunges with still more entirety into the human tide, and 
into the realities about him. He does not draw aside, like the 
ascetics, to contemplate his new self. More and more he 
consorts with his friends, the people — stage-drivers, boatmen, 
travellers, men of the street. There is something intensified, 
more fervent, in the affection drawing him to them. He al- 
ways had sympathy for the simple and the rude, but now he 
experiences near them a graver, more emotionalized feeling, 
a more complete abandon and communion. It was then 
that he definitely adopted the free and picturesque work- 
man's garb which he had worn as a printer-apprentice, the 
garb which among idlers gave him a little celebrity. He 
felt himself troubled by an incessant need of camaraderie 
and companionship, which only plain people could fully 
satisfy. Heretofore it was rather the need of knowledge 
which had made him mingle with the world. To his thir- 
tieth year he manifested himself the great bystander, the 
great inquirer, the great absorber. Now aspirations of fra- 
ternity dominate his sensibility, he needs to embrace, to 
breathe, to enjoy individuals, to be loved as he loves. 

O the joy of my soul leaning pois'd on itself, receiving identity through 
materials and loving them, observing characters and absorbing them, 

My soul vibrated back to me from them, from sight, hearing, touch, 
reason, articulation, comparison, memory, and the like. 1 



^Leaves of Grass, p. 146. 



118 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

His outlook was not the same as that before 1848. It 
was like a total deepening of himself, in which the world, 
viewed from a different angle, participates. Little by little 
his life moves about one centre — the luminous sheaf of the 
new concordances which manifest themselves every day be- 
tween his me and his not me — and he pencils innumerable 
notes in which are reflected the state of his soul and his trans- 
formed consciousness. His life, richly lived up to this, but 
without any other aim than to live, converges absolutely 
toward one great design whose accomplishment will occupy 
him to the very last day of his life. 

After ten years of literary and journalistic Bohemia the 
man awakens, inundated by a faith whose expression he is 
searching. Various interpretations as to the nature of this 
crisis, the capital event of the poet's life, have been at- 
tempted by his biographers. We are not surprised that they 
are misleading: because there are no scales for a test so im- 
ponderable. The awaking of genius is a phenomenon which 
does not become clear by the aid of argument. For it was 
surely to the birth pangs of a genius that Walt was a prey 
from the time he had felt a total renewal of his conscious- 
ness. 

According to Bucke, whose opinion we cite by reason of 
his authority as the "authorized" biographer of Whitman, 
at a precise epoch of his life which we do not know, but that 
it was toward his thirty-second or thirty -third year, a sud- 
den illumination was bestowed upon him as upon the great 
prophets of history, Buddha, Paul, or Mahomet, by which 
he was endowed with a new and superhuman sense which 
Bucke calls "cosmic consciousness." Describing the phe-» 
nomenon rigorously like a scientific fact, he comments upon 
certain passages of Leaves of Grass which appear to confirm 
his hypothesis. 1 Thus, in admitting this conjecture Walt 
had known positively his road to Damascus. 

I confess that I feel within me an insurmountable anti- 



iBucke: In Re Walt Whitman, pp. 329-347. 



THE GREAT DESIGN 119 

pathy to this explanation of a fact, which we should accept 
as we accept the grass, the wave, or the pebble, without sub- 
jecting the mind to the torture of discovering first causes. 
Mr. Binns, who revived this recently in adapting it to his 
own temperament, has not more convinced me. It is in- 
disputable that Walt was dowered with a "cosmic conscious- 
ness" to a degree which a very small number of men or super- 
men have attained, and I find particularly happy the for- 
mula of Bucke, which may stand. As to the explanation 
itself, in the simplest form of Bucke's statement, it seems 
to me almost puerile. To make a miracle intervene in such 
a life is it not to belittle it? All the greatness of the poet 
protests against such a postulate, and his formidable realism 
forbids any esoteric explanation. In the whole of his being 
and in the entirety of his life he presents himself to us in the 
brilliant light of humanity. Now genius, even that of a 
prodigious poet-prophet such as Walt Whitman appears, is 
not, I am sure, outside humanity. And every conjecture 
which tends to represent him with the features of someone 
Illuminated, even of a very Saint, is evidence of an incom- 
prehension of the man. 

How vain to found upon certain poetic affirmations the 
proof of a supernatural vision, which had from one moment 
to another transformed him! 

I cannot be awakened, for nothing looks to me as it did before. 

Or, else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep. 1 

Is it not clear that he is moved here by the illumination of 
genius? Why wish to Hx a precise date for this transforma- 
tion, when all that we know of the inner travail of Walt 
during the six or seven years which preceded the flowering 
of his book proves that it was not instantaneous, but slow 
and gradual. Why not hold to the simple truth of certain 
confessions of the poet, such as: "After continued personal 
ambition and effort, as a young fellow, to enter with the rest 

^Camden Edition, Ul, p. 287. 



120 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

into competition for the usual rewards, business, political, 
literary, etc. — to take part in the great melee, both for vic- 
tory's prize itself and to do some good — after years of those 
aims and pursuits, I found myself remaining possessed, at the 
age of thirty-one to thirty-three, with a special desire and 
conviction. Or rather, to be quite exact, a desire that had 
been flitting through my previous life, or hovering on the 
flanks, mostly indefinite hitherto, had steadily advanced to 
the front, defined itself, and finally dominated everything 
else." 1 

Surely Walt sufficiently explains himself. The beginning 
of this metamorphosis seems to me simpler and greater than 
all the piled-up hypotheses. For fifteen years he was in the 
grip of life. He bathed himself in floods of impressions, of 
visions, of sounds, of joys. He lived as few beings on the 
earth have lived. He absorbed realities with the appetite 
of a young giant. In his imperturbable manner, he was gorged 
with emotions, he enjoyed through all his pores. For thirty 
years all the life with which he was satiated, all the accu- 
mulated joys, the thousand shows and assimilated expe- 
riences germinate in him, flower into a new consciousness 
by whose light the recesses of the universe, the secrets 
of the world of souls, the supreme "laws not written" were 
before him like the words of a book. Walt has been en- 
grossed by facts, by men, by objects, by influences of nature. 
It was their prolonged contact, every day, free, which awak- 
ened, at a propitious moment, the powers sleeping in him. 
His new self was the natural fruit of his immense quest. The 
final explanation of the crisis is fully contained in this word 
of sublime candour, which he addresses to himself: 

Walt, you contain enough, why don't you let it out then? 2 

Why be astonished at such a wonderful result, when de- 
termined by genius, the intensifier par excellence? He had 

^Leaves of Grass, p. 426. 
Hd., p. 50. 



. THE GREAT DESIGN 121 

met that amplitude by his extraordinary individuality. In 
this reacting to the world exercised upon him, in acknowl- 
edgment of the joyous confidence which he lavished upon it, 
his self remains the principal factor; and ancestral influences, 
races, environment, his previous life, all concur in preparing 
this result which astonishes. 

He had a heart full of the substance of life and one drop 
sufficed to overflow it. And now he was inundated. An 
interior light appeared and grew, till its rays enveloped 
finally the entire horizon, placing in relief the smallest de- 
tails of the landscape and their place in the divine ensemble. 
Through the identity of his being and of the world he per- 
ceives the unity of all, so that there flows into him the sense 
of the miracle of creation. To the extent that the pulsa- 
tions of the external world echo within him, and that he 
himself is projected into this external world, the universal 
relation and the great consubstantiality of things, their 
monomultiplicity, become illumined with certitude. He 
arrives at the consciousness which supreme geniuses alone 
of the race have possessed, and it is not in his brain that it 
dwells only: his little finger is also penetrated with it. He 
is mastered by the power of a thing lived and felt, as one is by 
heat or cold. It is not a philosophic conviction, but a reality 
of every day which he will never weary in proving. When 
he contemplates himself, it is the radiant abyss of the whole 
he fathoms and when he casts his glance about him, it is his 
own being which he sees reflected in the face of things. Iden- 
tity, identity! Law supreme! Walt slowly walks in a 
universe of wonders which his days are not long enough to 
count. For these new truths which he discovers everywhere 
are but confided to him that he may in his turn reveal them 
to the world. He is the man predestined to be the inter- 
preter of a great Idea and, confident in his star, he obeyed 
and yielded himself to the impetus. . . . 

That undoubtedly was the whole miracle, and the revela- 
tion which Walt received was akin to those which have given 



122 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

birth in the past to the marvellous legends of Sinai, of the 
road to Damascus, of the voice of the Maid, or the nymph 
Egeria. Only there was one difference: it is that perhaps 
such a revelation was never manifested to a man whose 
physical constitution, radiant and magnetic personality, 
attributes, character, marked him as king of his kind, before 
even he yielded to it. But between the Walt before and the 
Walt after the crisis there was no interruption. The second 
was superadded to the first, the new man sprang from the 
old one, as a flower from the stem, as the stem from the seed, 
after the strength of the soil had determined its germination. 

For years the great Idea was incarnated under successive 
forms in proportion as it elucidated itself. It simmered a 
long time in him before arriving at the boiling point. He 
did not settle all at once on the medium by which he was to 
make himself heard, that is to say, of communicating his 
message to the world. Entirely self-absorbed in the con- 
templation of the great world, he revolved in his mind many 
projects. 

Walt's metamorphosis took form in exalting in him the 
autochthonous and of increasing tenfold the innate pas- 
sion which he possessed of his race, his soil, and his time. 
He was American in every fibre, and the previous revelation, 
which discovered to him both his own being and humanity 
about him, clarified the image of a heroic individual, the 
individual American, the democrat of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, and the magnificent Federation of States, in growth 
like an organism, expanding every day, beyond rivers and 
mountains and deserts to the limits of the sea-guarded 
continent. It was then in glorifying this new human type, 
and this collectivity united by new bonds, that Walt would 
fulfill his mission. He was come to justify his time and the 
labour of his people. He had made the trial of Democracy 
and he was about to publish his testimony. His deep knowl- 
edge of the crowd and of all the aspects of multitudinous 
humanity were a deposit within him of an enthusiastic faith; 



THE GREAT DESIGN 123 

upon this his new spiritual insight would enable him to erect 
the monument which he would dedicate to the exaltation of 
the modern times. 

Among these projects, these embryos, these tentatives 
which he had in mind before coming to the definitive ex- 
pression of himself, it is necessary to mention the Primer, 
recently discovered among his papers. We possess only the 
outlines of the book which he wished to give this singular 
title. It was, as a variant indicates, a "First Book of Words 
or A. B. C. for the use of young Americans, of Scholars, 
Orators, Professors, Musicians, Judges, Presidents, etc." 
(Notice the significant place which presidents occupy, 
the tail of the procession led by the individual, King of 
Democracy.) The note of the future poem already vibrates 
in this sketch. In developing his theme, which is to exalt 
the life of words, the evocative and representative power of 
words, which come to us charged with realities, which are 
realities, to affirm the importance of the voice, accent, to 
incite America to create boldly a rude speech, iiew, autochthon- 
ous, suggestive, full of idiomatic expressions, in touch with 
the time, the character of the people, instead of European 
expressions, anti-modern, which have no signification for 
the humanity of the new world — Walt proves himself al- 
ready in possession of some of his fundamental motifs. The 
substance of Leaves of Grass was already formed at the time 
of the first editing of this outline, whose date remains uncer- 
tain. One merely knows that he worked on it till 1857 and 
that he made additions to it later. The Primer, in his 
original intention, was to be the subject of a lecture; but 
later he had the idea of making a book of it. But lecture 
and book were abandoned, and the Primer remained in its 
rudimentary form. It is that the sap circulating in these 
pages flowed into another project, the one definitive and 
actual, his poem; the form alone remained inchoate. 1 

During a sufficiently long period the idea of fulfilling his 

, *Walt Whitman: An American Primer, Edited by Horace Traubel. 



124 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

mission in lecturing throughout the country preoccupied 
him. According to the colourful expression of his mother, 
he then wrote whole "barrels" full of subjects for lectures. 
Discourse appeared to him the mode the most direct and 
most effective of widely spreading the truths which he champ- 
ioned. 

That was the cherished idea which he weighed, debated, 
looked at on all sides, with the slowness and the circumspec- 
tion which he always showed in the elaboration of his plans; 
and to do this he was fully prepared since his adolescence. 
He devoted himself to a thorough study of the art of oratory, 
of gesture, of elocution, and of tonality, etc. . . . He 
was even drawn into debating clubs which he assiduously 
frequented and at the age when the first ardours of battle 
seethed within him. At one and twenty, when he was still 
at Long Island, he had discoursed abundantly, and not with- 
out success, in the meetings prepared for the election of Van 
Buren to the presidency. 1 His recitations of Shakespeare and 
Homer, alone near the sea, or to his friends, the coachmen 
and boatmen, likewise prepared him for the role of orator. 
He had in mind a vigorous, living, simple, and striking man- 
ner of expressing himself in public, as remote from the nasal- 
ity of the preacher or the shouting of platform politicians, 
as from the parlour talker. He would try upon his auditors 
the effect of his personal magnetism and would establish 
such communion between them and him that they would 
take part, that is to say, in the action — in his discourse. He 
wishes "to hurry and plow up the soil of the hearer con- 
stantly dropping seed therein, to spring up and bear grain 
or fruit many hours afterward, perhaps weeks and years 
afterward." 2 The papers published after his death by his 
testamentary executors are scattered with fragments, 
sketches, and indexes relative to his platform project. He 
was so strongly attached to this, that in spite of the appear- 



iH. B. Binns: Life of Walt Whitman, p. 33. 
*Camden Edition, VIII, p. 251. 



THE GREAT DESIGN 125 

ance of his poem, he resumed it in 1857 and '58 and engaged 
all practical means to execute it. His plan was to travel 
through the country with a program of lectures, which he 
would deliver for a moderate price and of which he would 
himself sell advance printed copies. 1 They made "an in- 
tegral part of his schemes for self -presentation." 2 Very 
early in his life the idea of presenting himself direct allured 
him. Such was his faith in the miracle of his own presence 
and the certitude that he had always had of the effluence of 
his personality physical and moral: nevertheless he made a 
speech, but once, the 31st of March, 1851, at the Artists 
Union of Brooklyn. The text of this address appeared in a 
daily 3 and he even kept some paragraphs in the selection of 
his juvenilia, 4 which show us that at this time the man al- 
ready was passing through the first phase of his crisis. There 
is a notable passage where he strongly puts forth heroic 
beauty of conduct, that is to say beauty lived, as against the 
represented beauty by artists, which shows him big with his 
new consciousness. 

This first intention of lecturing through the country, never 
completely abandoned, but unceasingly postponed, shows 
at least how from the beginning he felt the importance of his 
mission. We already clearly perceive that he was not con- 
cerned for himself, as are other geniuses, in the production 
of a literary Work, verse or prose, in an artistic or an oratori- 
cal work, conceived for itself, but in an apostolate best 
adapted to his idea. He was to translate and to give him- 
self, him, Walt Whitman, in the form the- most appropriate 
to his time and his milieu. 

He was stirred to put himself in touch with humanity. 
That had come to be the great ambition of his life and so re- 
mained : an ambition as immense as his share of human am- 



l Camden Edition, Introduction, pp. liv-vii. 

2 Id., IX, p. xvi. 

3 Brooklyn Daily Advertiser, April 3, 1851. See extracts in Bliss Perry's Walt Whitman, pp. 50-55. 

Complete Prose, p. 371. 



128 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

bition was small. And now he perceived that his ten or 
fifteen previous years had been dominated by the idea of ful- 
filling a mission to humanity something greatly beyond the 
vain hopes of the candid and proud hours of adolescence. Per- 
haps he would realize it by these lectures. In the end fate was 
fulfilled in other ways. Whatever preparations he made for 
the role of lecturer and whatever was his prestige as a man, 
we easily understand why the great project should remain 
on paper. His temperament was too hostile to a manifesta- 
tion of this kind. However free and natural had been his 
manner of addressing an audience, his profound aversion to 
all parade would have been an almost insurmountable ob- 
stacle. Every platform is a play in miniature and to every 
good orator certain gifts of the actor are indispensable. And 
Walt, although he adored it, was certainly not gifted for the 
theatre. 

These shrouded preparatory years (1851-54) and these 
suggestive notes which have come to us can alone suggest 
the character, hint a period of internal effervescence and of 
labour, fervent, assiduous, persistent; Volume IX of the Cam- 
den Edition, padded with signs, with notations, with hints, 
preserves the reflection of this. Thought fuses from him in 
long jets, as though he were trying the mould into which to 
pour it. That which especially strikes one is that his diverse 
projects, during these ardent and meditative years in which 
the man is labouring to rid himself of his matrices, do not dif- 
fer except in expression, still badly defined. Since he had 
listened to the clear call of his renewed consciousness, "the 
flush of his faith had been from the beginning one and the 
same character." 

The moment comes in 1854 probably when these various 
plans which he had meditated -had to be put away to make 
room for a work whose great lines, heretofore glimpsed, now 
impose themselves upon his mind. At the time he counted 
on resuming later his other projects: and the event disap- 
pointed him. It was in climbing the scaffolding of his 



THE GREAT DESIGN 127 

houses, hammer and saw in hand, that the idea came to him 
of a poem which should be as the Gospel of the new spirit, 
such as his race and his time potentially contained, a great 
native Book for the use of the living of to-day; and during the 
intervals left him from the business of carpentry, slackened 
circumstantially, he revolved and matured it. It was the 
final realization of his great design, and all the essence of his 
previous sketches was accumulating for it, creating a new 
form whose contours, still indefinite, were to be after all 
very different from the primitive project. For if this was 
to be positively a poem, the raison d'etre of the book as well 
as its proportions should be made a thing outre, strange, 
new, without precedent. . . . But the essential — it was 
that Walt was to be able to express himself. The gestation 
had been long. After five years of listening, ruminating his 
plans, taking notes almost everywhere, under the immediate 
dictation of impressions before the living model, at the Opera, 
on the pavements, on the ferries, near the sea, obedient to 
the inspiration of the moment which brought to birth some- 
times some poetical lines, sometimes the paragraph of a 
lecture, he had come at last to master the bond which would 
make one whole of these particles; he had done with frag- 
ments. In the elaboration of his work he had advanced, 
as in life, without hurry or feverishness, in idling, in pausing, 
in repassing a number of times the same roads, waiting that 
the fruit be ripe to pluck it. 

Walt then, compelled by his poetical call, quitted his 
carpentry and set to work. The task was difficult, and ac- 
cording to his own confession the writing of it did not come 
easily. He constructed a thing entirely new, and he had to 
endure the terrible struggle of great innovators with their 
material. He had especially great trouble in leaving out of 
his work "the stock 'poetical' touches" of which convention 
had filled the poetical arsenal — those he himself at one time 
used, and of which he was now eager to rid himself at one 
stroke. One time, we are told, pushed by desire for solitude 



128 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

and liberty, lie retreated to a wild and desolate promontory 
to the east of Long Island where not a living being dwelt; 
there he wrote a first version, and dissatisfied with it, he 
threw it into the sea. 1 He loved to recite to himself, in pac- 
ing along some lonely shore, fragments of his work, as he had 
many times declaimed Homer and Shakespeare, to test their 
effect in the open air, accompanied by the deep bass of the 
ocean. He destroyed as many as five manuscripts before 
obtaining his definite text. Walt was obstinate like the old 
Quakers of his family and he wrestled hand to hand with 
the word till he had conquered it. 

Early in the summer of 1855 the book was ready. Walt 
did not have the absurd idea of carrying his manuscript to 
a publisher, who would no doubt have asked if he were jesting 
with him. Walt was a printer and could say with Miche- 
let: "Before writing books, I have actually composed them: 
I have put together the letters before putting together the 
ideas." Above all, it would have been expensive to have 
placed his leaflets in mercenary hands, and he was intensely 
eager that all the details of the make-up of the volume should 
be in his own hands. He had his own idea in the matter and 
was not indifferent to the book, for the manuscript was well 
prepared. He went then to his friends, Andrew Rome and 
his brother who kept a job printing office in Brooklyn, at 
the corner of Fulton and Cranberry streets, and arranged 
with them for the printing of the volume. He went himself 
every day before the case and composed with his own hands 
the greater part of it. .Walt duly preserved his self-posses- 
sion and never allowed the movements of his intimate being 
to appear on his face of the "unaffected animal," at this | 
decisive moment more than at any other; but one suspects 
the emotion which in spite of himself must have sometimes | 
penetrated him while undisturbed he set his type. HIS 
BOOK, his BOOK! His Bible, for whose message he had 
searched during the years, to be formulating the paragraphs ! 

*0. L. Triggs: Selections, Introduction, p. xxiii. 



THE GREAT DESIGN 129 

The revelation which he was about to spread through the 
world, and which should re-echo beyond the centuries: it 
was there, between his fingers, he was handling syllables of 
fire. . . . The man with the ruddy face and grayish beard 
should have lived then grave and intense moments, en- 
veloped in the mantle of his placidity. The poet revised his 
proofs slowly, sometimes carrying them to the seaside to re- 
read again aloud and to verify the impression which his pages 
gave in nature's setting. 

The volume appeared in the first days of July, 1855. 

Walt realized his enterprise in secret. He confided to no 
one, and unless by certain fugitive symptoms, by his more 
frequent escapes, by the number of pages which he was writ- 
ing, it is hardly possible that his family discerned the intense 
travail which was being wrought in him. His book had 
grown like seed sown, which spreads invisible and silent, 
beneath the soil. Who among his relatives and comrades 
would ever have suspected that this Walt, the idler, the 
friend of coachmen and of pilots, the frequenter of Broadway, 
the quiet and affectionate boy, so close to the heart of the 
simple, could cherish a design as mad, as unsuitable as that 
of being the singer of his Race and his Age? Without any 
preliminary advertisement, without ceasing a single instant 
to show himself the most everyday of men, this great phleg- 
matic being gave at one stroke his measure, and projected 
beyond him his real self, his formidable self, concealed from 
all. If Walt took the wisest precautions with a view of pro- 
ducing with his book the maximum of effect, he could not 
have succeeded more in amazing people than he did in an- 
nouncing himself with this sudden positiveness and this 
terrible assurance. For the little household the event almost 
coincided with a bereavement. July 11th, some days after 
the bringing out of the enigmatic book, the old carpenter 
died. The last farmer of West Hills died at the very hour 
when his son proved to the world the virility of the blood from 
which he sprang. Walt, who loved him, accepted this loss 



, 



130 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

with a fortitude with which he confronted all strokes of fate, 
and continued on his way. 

The hour struck in his life: it was when after having ab- 
sorbed all that the world offered to him of emotion, he gave 
himself as nurture, when, after having been fertilized, he be- 
came in his turn procreator. For Walt was not ungrateful 
to life; he returned to the great current all that he had re- 
ceived from it with his Personality superadded. 



IX 
THE FIRST SONG 

One cannot resist an emotion when slowly fingering this 
small quarto, for which the bard of the New World himself 
set the type, and to whose pages he committed his great 
message. O the poor and fantastic volume, banal and 
touching — generations shall respectfully defile before it, per- 
haps, when it lies in the hall of honour of a great museum, not 
far from the first folio of Shakespeare. . . . 

Bound in dark green cloth, very ordinary looking, a naive 
decoration of flowers and leaves on the cover; in the middle 
sprawls, repeated on the other side, in gilt letters, now faded, 
this singular title, this enigmatic title, at once humble and 
haughty, this title which includes a whole program, itself a 
marvellous conception, simple and profound like all great 
things of genius: Leaves of Grass. To render it more 
eloquent the letters which compose it are extended a little 
awkwardly in tiny roots and leaves: these are not dead and 
rigid forms of the alphabet but living letters which germinate 
and imbibe their substance anywhere 

One hundred pages, printed in large type on ordinary 
paper, and the text, by its strange arrangement, gives, at 
first glance, the impression of a pell-mell of uneven verse 
sentences: that is all the volume. From the first page no 
light comes, for it contains only the title, Leaves of 
Grass, followed by these words: Brooklyn, New York, 
1855. This singular anonymat suggests a blending of pride 
and of modesty : a name is read though, that of Walter Whit- 
man, but concealed where, according to the American 
custom, is inscribed "All rights reserved." To make up for 
this, a portrait faces the title, the famous portrait which we 

131 



132 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

have described, of a young man, in workman's garb, with a 
bearing at once firm and nonchalant, with the air of a sailor, 
a docker, or a cowboy. Walt signed his book with himself 
instead of his name. To some this singular likeness ap- 
peared a defiance, to others a pose. In reality, the author 
does not pose, he imposes with a cool assurance. The make- 
up of the book shows an inelegance, perhaps intentional, and 
suggests, outwardly a positive taste of the primitive. 

The contents are more difficult to describe. However 
accustomed we may be to all the audacities of form and 
feeling, the strange man who did not wish to sign his name 
except with his likeness baffles still at first contact. After 
a preface of ten pages, printed in double columns, itself 
but a long poem in prose, where the author expounds and 
develops the essentials of his great Idea, follow a dozen lyric 
bits, without other titles than the volume. One of them, 
the first, fills more than half the quarto : it is the future Song 
of Myself — key of the entire work, such as we now have it. 
Are these then poems? We do not know. These verses 
have a rhythm as the wind and the sea have a rhythm— a 
rhythm which one does not perceive till one has closely 
scrutinized them; but any versification were it the most 
comprehensive — to lay aside rhyme, the very idea of which 
is remote — would not know how to justify them. The 
work of a fool or a mystifier, readers must think, even in- 
telligent ones, of the year 1855; and we need not be much 
astonished that, to our own day even, Leaves of Grass appears 
to the mass a riddle. 

These lyric pages repelled at once by their chaotic and 
barbaric expression. Their enormous novelty raised an 
obstacle between the generality of readers and the man who 
sings himself, him and his nation, distinct yet blended in one | 
same embrace. They were like rude chants, filled with 
raucous accents of a new world where no literature has yet 
sprung, and they revealed a formidable exaltation of created 
things and of limitless life. One might believe the anony- 



THE FIRST SONG 133 

inous rhapsodist tried to force the entire onomatopoeia 
of wild nature into his book. Since the age of the great 
bards of Greece and of India, the world had unlearned the 
sound of such a voice which resurged from the bosom of 
modern humanity with an accrued power, charged with new 
significance, bodying forth the aspirations of an Aboriginal 
of American cities. From these pages sprang a new Adam, 
resplendently nude, who shocks by his unwonted proportions 
and his disdain of all ornament, big, bearded, exhaling the 
wild odour of life. ... In his preface, which is itself a 
manifesto, the new author explained his design: according 
to him the United States offered to a true and great poet the 
most splendid themes the ages and civilizations have known. 
These States conceal an enormous beauty which native bards 
not rhymers manipulating syllables and emotions imported 
from Europe, should justify by their songs, tallying them 
to the immensity of the continent, to the fecundity of its 
people, to the appetites of a proud race, fluent and free. 
And the portrait in the book seemed to say, accentuating as 
it were, the noble and calm confidence in himself from whom 
flowed the preface: "I, Walt Whitman, American of the 
people, I am come to show the way to these new bards, to 
sing America as she needs to be sung and thus reveal her to 
herself. As in former times, the portrait of kings in court 
costume was published, at the head of the chapter dedicated 
to their reign, I present me to you as the poetical represent- 
ative of an age, as the one by whose mouth America is sung." 
And with a candid faith and an overwhelming audacity the 
man in the large felt hat, the friend of stage-drivers and of 
boatmen, celebrated himself, the delights of his body and 
the intoxications of his heart, with the shouts of a lover, 
returning in floods the bewildering joys which the world 
gave him. When you hold this book in your hands you 
forget that you touch a book: you touch a man who thrilled, 
rejoiced, was exalted, was diffused, in linking his people, 
his time, and yourself to his fervours, to his colossal faith, to 



134 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

his intoxicated joy. Walt introduced his personality into 
this book, and the book lives by the very rhythm of his life. 
He has not introduced only his great and throbbing heart, 
he has put there his body, the lineaments of his face, his 
voice, and even his dress. Leaves of Grass, it was a gift 
Walt Whitman made of himself to you, to me, to the nearest 
and the farthest, to the Crowd, the most authentic of his 
companions. 

Eight hundred copies of the book were printed; these 
were put on sale in two or three bookstores in New York and 
Brooklyn. Walt at first fixed the price at two dollars; then 
not wishing that the price be an obstacle to its circulation, he 
reduced it one-half. 1 A free list was furnished to the journ- 
als, to the principal reviews, and to reputable writers. What 
welcome did the public give to the book into which Walt 
actually translated himself? At first it was silence. With- 
out the name of the author, scarcely offered for sale, an- 
nounced in only one or two friendly newspapers, the volume 
had nothing to call attention to it. 

After a certain time, the booksellers, not seeing a single 
buyer come, asked that the unsold copies be taken away. 
As for the copies sent to the celebrities, many were returned 
to the author with insulting comment. It was the prelude 
to the tempest of abuse to which for long years the man and 
his work were subjected. Literary men of well-established 
reputation considered as an affront the sending of this book. 
Whittier, the great Whittier, threw, we are told, the book into 
the fire. 2 The Quaker poet disowned the son of Quakers. It is 
also known that in one editorial room Leaves of Grass, read 
aloud, furnished an hour of fun to a roomful of New York re- 
porters, the worse for idleness. 3 And that was pretty much 
all. Laughter, gross words; there was Walt, with his message 
left and not paid for. 



»H. B. Binns: Life of Walt Whitman, pp. 87-88. 

^Camden Edition, Introduction, p. liii. Donaldson: Walt Whitman, the Man, p. 51. 

3 John Burroughs: Notes, p. 16. 



THE FIRST SONG 135 

Leaves of Grass was out about fifteen days when the 
author, one morning early, received the following letter, 
addressed to "Mr. Walter Whitman," a letter which he 
reread many times from heading to signature, before being 
sure he was not the sport of an illusion: 

Concord, Mass., July 21, 1855. 

Dear Sir, — I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of 
"Leaves of Grass." I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and 
wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading 
it, as great power makes us happy. It meets the demand I am always 
making of what seems the sterile and stingy Nature, as if too much handi- 
work or too much lymph in the temperament were making our Western 
wits fat and mean. I give you joy of your free and brave thought. I 
have great joy in it. I find incomparable things, said incomparably well, 
as they must be. I find the courage of treatment which so delights us, and 
which large perception only can inspire. 

I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had 
a long foreground somewhere, for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little 
to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a 
sober certainty. It has the best merits, namely, of fortifying and en- 
couraging. 

I did not know, until I last night saw the book advertised in a newspaper, 
that I could trust the name as real and available for a post-office. 

I wish to see my benefactor, and have felt much like striking my tasks, 
and visiting New York to pay you my respects. 

R. W. Emerson. 

Thus the great Emerson, then at the height of his 
reputation, honoured in England as well as America, under- 
stood. Walt had read right: it was not a perfunctory ac- 
knowledgment which he had in his hands, but the warmest 
and freest acceptance which he could have hoped for his 
message. With his prophet eye, the sage of Concord 
pierced the rude envelope of his poem, and penetrated its 
inmost reality. And the man who incarnated the highest 
thought and the highest poesy of America saluted him as an 
equal, even as a master, and bowed before him. . . . 
This astonishing letter, this historic letter, which was — and 



136 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

which will always be — as much honour to one who wrote 
it as to the man who deserved it, was indeed a thunderbolt. 
Walt was able to foresee much, but he had not foreseen this. 
And however colossal was his assurance from the first, and 
clear the conviction of the bearing of his book, he felt 
possibly, at this very moment, that he had conquered, should 
he wait centuries. The opinion of Emerson, was it not 
worth the approbation of a thousand readers? And wholly 
indifferent as he proved to insults as to panegyrics, the com- 
fort to him must have been immense. 

Any other beginner — for, in the new way he had entered 
upon Walt could but begin — receiving such a letter would 
have been crazed. With nothing in his cool manner which 
would betray the emotion he was experiencing, Walt con- 
tinued to receive the few reviews which here and there 
Leaves of Grass called forth. The scornful silence of the 
greater part of the critics and the indifference of the public 
appeared authoritative. At best from time to time some 
derisive judgments created diversion, in which the author 
was treated as a buffoon. The book was not opened ex- 
cept to create ridicule or exasperation. Walt, running 
through these appreciations, felt a warmth penetrate him in 
thinking of Emerson's letter, which was there, in his portfolio. 

It was then that Walt, seeing his work misunderstood and 
vilified — he was not prepared for such an ignominious re- 
ception — and feeling alone with it, bethought himself of 
a great expedient. Since no one came to lift aloft his 
trampled banner, he would himself recover it and in com- 
batting defend the assault. He had friends on the press — he 
had belonged to it himself for twelve years — and he would 
use both for his fight. This queer boy, who would not have 
lifted a finger for the winning of notoriety, and who, not 
once in his life, made an interested visit to an influential man, 
wrote three virulent and glowing articles on his book and on 
himself, which appeared, anonymously, in the Brooklyn 
Daily Times of September 29th, the Democratic Review of the 



THE FIRST SONG 137 

same month and the Journal of Phrenology of Fowler and 
Wells, who accepted the agency of his book. 1 By their 
freedom, the bold and crude way in which the poet describes 
his personality, and defines the character of his work, these 
pleas pro domo present themselves as precious documents. 
A tropical individualism culminates and expands in them 
with an unmatched luxuriance. Some confessed themselves 
shocked by such a method of advertising. It was not that. 
As for the poet, he was not concerned with the success or 
failure of his book, because his vanity as an author was 
nothing : but the future of his Idea meant more to him than 
all the world. In his heart he believed in the revelation 
which Leaves of Grass announced, as in the movement of the 
stars. His day would come; but, wise man, he also knew 
that destiny helps them who help themselves. 

Emerson was not satisfied to write to the author all the 
surprise and joy which the reading of his poems gave him. 
He spoke of them to his friends 2 and to visitors who made 
the Concord pilgrimage. When one of them, Moncure Con- 
way, the historian of Thomas Paine, came, he presented to 
him the quarto with the foliage decorated cover, saying to 
him: "Americans who are abroad can now return: unto 
us a man is born." 3 "No man with eyes in his head," says 
Emerson again to Conway in lending him Leaves of Grass, 
"but could recognize a real poet in that book." And Con- 
way was eager to go and see the one Emerson had spoken of 
in such words. 4 His expression of the power of Walt is un- 
forgettable: "I went off to myself sleepless with thinking of 
this new acquaintance. . . . He has so magnetized 
me, so charged me, with something indefinable." 

Walt, not having succeeded in selling his disdained book, 
was reduced to distributing it among his friends and relatives 



1 These three articles have been reprinted in In Re Walt Whitman. 

^Camden's Compliment to Walt Whitman, p, 61. 

'John Burroughs: Walt Whitman, p. 50. 

4 Moncure Conway's Walt Whitman, Fortnightly Review, October 15, 1866. 



138 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WOEK 

who probably did not understand it at all but who, through 
kindness or simple politeness, could not refuse it. The 
sale of the first edition was null: those of the eight hundred 
copies which were not gifts must have been thrown away or 
destroyed, 1 torn up or sold as old paper. It found, however, 
one buyer, the only one probably : a man stopped in front of 
a bookstore in Brooklyn, opened the volume, then paid for 
it. It was John Swinton, who became later a warm friend of 
Whitman. 2 

There was no doubt of it: it was a fiasco. In the general 
silence, broken only by insulting raillery, there was the 
magnificent letter of Emerson, and that was all. Walt, in 
thinking on the fate of his book, thought sometimes that 
that was enough. Two or three newspapers took the book 
seriously : The New York Tribune where later insults were 
not spared him, and Putnam's Magazine dedicated to him 
sympathetic paragraphs. The only really enthusiastic 
article which he read is the one of Everett Hale, published in 
the North American Review of January, 1856: "The book 
is worth going twice to the store to buy. . . . It does not 
contain a word intended to attract the reader by its gross- 
ness." 3 The advice was not followed; but the irony! The 
unique testimony, frankly eulogistic, which Leaves of Grass 
produced, was signed by a clergyman. . . . This un- 
expected precursor merits the homage of the future. 

It would be wholly to misunderstand Walt to suppose 
that the frigidity of this reception made him lose a grain of 
his courage. From day to day, the plan of his enterprise 
was defined in his own mind. For it was not a complete 
and definitive book which he meant to offer: the dozen poems 
represent but the first stratum of a work to which his life 
was to be consecrated, and which was to grow, story by 
story, reaching proportions which he already saw; but life 

iBucke: Walt Whitman, p. 138. H. Traubel: With Walt Whitman in Camden, p. 92. 
2 H. Traubel: With Walt Whitman in Camden, p. 24. 
8 W. S. Kennedy: Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, p. 85. 



THE FIRST SONG 139 

alone in the successive phases of his individuality should 
determine its completion. As his friend Bucke indicated 
later, "a profound part of the plan of the work was the way 
by which many things in it were left free for future adjust- 
ment." 1 

Leaves of Grass came into the world at an epoch of tur- 
gescence and unrest in American letters. New aspirations, 
ideas, which corresponded with economic and political 
changes, disturbed the literary world. Among the confused 
notions which floated in the air which young writers seized, 
was that of an autochthonous literature, which should no 
longer be subject to European models. The American mind 
sought an expression of itself and deemed itself ripe for ac- 
quiring a poetical nationality. With these preoccupations, 
the lyrists borrowed their motifs from Indian legends — a 
method somewhat superficial of thus exalting, thus coming 
close to the origin, the truth of their race. In the salient 
work of the preceding years certain of these aspirations 
were visible. From 1848 to 1850 Whittier published The 
Bridal of Pennacook, the collection of Voices of Liberty, and 
the Songs of Labour. The Bigelow Papers of Lowell were of 
1848, and the Hiawatha of Longfellow, an attempt at an 
indigenous epic, appeared some months after Leaves of Grass. 
The theme of these works was certainly American, but their 
spirit and form were scarcely so: those were of literature — 
sometimes excellent. A simple comparison between Hia- 
watha and Leaves of Grass suffices to show how wide apart 
were the two books appearing the same year. And Emerson 
was, moreover, among all, the one who most clearly formu- 
lated the ideal, and suggested, in his discourses, that there 
should be a real American poet. It was he who was truly 
the Precursor. 

This transformation which was operating in American 
letters was accompanied by an effort of literary decentral- 
ization. For some time the activity monopolized by New 

»Bucke: Walt Whitman, p. 137. 



140 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

England spread to New York, before but little concerned 
with literature, and a stirring Bohemia of writers, journalists, 
poetasters, searching to find in the Metropolitan city the 
intellectual prestige which had not yet disquieted it. Walt 
was part of this for some years after he left his island with 
literary schemes, and the success of the Democratic Review, 
where he first published his stories, corresponded to this 
awakening. Some New York writers won celebrity, notably 
R. H. Stoddard and Bayard Taylor, around whom gravitated 
a whole coterie of versifiers and essayists, all working more 
or less at journalism for a living, and some of whom acquired 
a name. Walt did not belong to this coterie — and he was 
soon to make himself felt. In short the supremacy, till then 
uncontested, of the New England writers threatened to be 
cut into by the new group of New Yorkers. 

Walt, with his book, seemed then to arrive exactly at the 
moment to fulfill the desire which suggested but did not de- 
fine that something new and indigenous whose need was 
tormenting the American soul. But there: it was so new 
and so indigenous and Leaves of Grass incarnated the idea 
which was in the air in a fashion so rude, so adequate, and 
real, that no one consented to recognize it. The book was 
flouted by all or nearly all except the great Emerson, who 
never proved better than in this circumstance his power of 
prophet. 

As is usual with fate, the conventional efforts answering 
to the new aspirations were accepted, and Walt's "barbaric 
yawp" which no one expected — and whose form and sub- 
stance were both outlandish — was to be received by shouts and 
ridicule. There was the man, he whom all anticipated and 
called for, but as none had dreamed him so great he was 
passed by without a salute. After half a century America 
still fails to recognize him. 



WALT INSULTED 

Not only was he not discouraged by his rebuff, but he was 
prepared to commit the same offense with a new daring. Far 
from exhausting his power, the first spurt of it accelerated 
its effusion and this time poems burst from him in full leaf- 
age, heavy and pithy, branching in rich verse. Walt had a 
cycle to encompass and he pursued at that moment one of 
his most decisive advances. 

In the middle of the summer of 1856, just one year after 
his first attempt, he brought out a second edition. The 
book was considerably enlarged: it was 16 mo of 385 
pages, containing twenty new poems, and this time each 
poem had a distinct title. The work, in growing, was dis- 
tinguished as living beings are: more than that, the author 
was given, after his first bits, to a labour of correction and of 
revision, which he was to pursue faithfully to the verge of his 
death. Now the volume bore his name on the cover, also 
ornamented with leaves. The Preface to the edition of 1855 
had disappeared, or rather was transmuted into poems, and 
the portrait, which made an integral part of the plan of 
Leaves of Grass, was retained. Walt did not have a publisher, 
but his friends, Fowler & Wells, the proprietors of the 
Phrenological Cabinet, on Broadway, were responsible for 
placing it on sale. Their name did not appear on the first 
page. 

Profiting by his first experience, the poet took precaution 
that the book should not pass unnoticed. He showed the 
glorious letter of Emerson to his friend, Charles A. Dana, 
editor of the New York Sun, and Dana, who was also 
Emerson's friend, advised him outright to publish it: it was 

141 



142 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

truly too decisive, too magnificent, to be kept in a portfolio. 
Walt then decided to append it to his poems, followed by a 
reply in a juvenile strain, one even somewhat rash in its 
inconsiderate pride, in which he reaffirms the need of a 
literature candidly autochthonous and manifests his au- 
dacious intention of satisfying it; the letter also contained a 
solemn homage to his dear "Friend and Master" Emerson, 
for having first signalled the shores of the "new continent of 
interior America.' ' This reply, to speak true, was not very 
happy and, the day he wrote it, his usual discretion forsook 
him. Not only did he publish Emerson's letter after his 
poems, but with the splendid audacity of a beginner and in 
the very American spirit of an advertisement, he had printed 
in gold letters on the back of the cover this sentence: "I 
salute you at the commencement of a great career, It. W. 
Emerson," which flashed above the name of the author. "I 
regarded that letter as the chart of an emperor," Walt Whit- 
man said later, to justify that audacity — for which he never 
sought to be excused, believing he did right. Since the 
great voice of Emerson, amid derision, was raised in his favour, 
he lifted his name like a standard. The appendix also con- 
tained the collection of reviews which his book had received 
for the year. These he placed impartially under the eye of 
the public. Naturally it was insult and ridicule which 
dominated these pages. 

Leaves of Grass in this transitory phase of its development 
already startles by its tremendous beauty. Only the first 
story of the structure, whose completion he will work at all 
his life, was built, but such as it was then, it calls forth 
wonder. He is more master of his art later with his power 
disciplined; but never does he display so much passion, 
superabundance, torrential violence. The very titles have 
immensity, showing the poet in all the intoxication of his 
genius and of his idea. Listen to them rather: A Poem of 
Women, Poem of Numbers in One, Poem of the Wonder of the 
Resurrection of the Wheat, Poem of Singers and of Words of 



WALT INSULTED 143 

PoemSy Poems of Liberty for Asia, Africa, Europe, America, 
Australia, Cuba and the Archipelago, Poem of Absolute Mira- 
cles, A Poem of Propositions of Nudity, Poem of Speakers of 
Words of the Earth .... One seems listening to some 
First Man uttering in the morning of the world universal 
words which name things and encircle the earth. In them 
his arms reach the confines of the globe, his voice dilates 
beyond the seas. You are overcome by the bewildering and 
the boundless in these outbursts of an adorer of the total 
life. And it is not a hollow verbalism nor the cadence of 
periods which subdues you : you are possessed by these living 
words whose power is not of other books, but rather of real 
things. 

Nevertheless the public did not better understand. The 
letter of Emerson, whose name shone like a beacon, forced 
attention, but could not open understandings. If, the first 
time, the effort of Walt was received with marked indiffer- 
ence, now it raised a storm of opprobrium and vituperation. 
A flood of insults, from full throats, rolled upon the 16 mo 
where were engraved these words in gold letters: "I salute 
you at the commencement of a great career, R. W. Emerson." 
After a half century has passed, one cannot, without smiling, 
turn over the leaves of the brochure 1 in which, four years 
later, Walt impassively published these testimonies — the 
most offensive as the most comic, the most furious as well 
as the most foolish. The vocabulary of insult is somewhat 
the same at all times and in all countries : but here truly the 
measure is more than full. The author of Leaves of Grass 
was more than a fool, he was a satyr: his book was not only 
a literary crime, but an insult to morals. 

And while the bigots foamed, the "literary critics," the 
mob of scribblers dragged in the mire the would-be poet, 
ignorant of the first principle of the versifier's art. Walt 
was caught between two fires : he had to endure the malicious 
or rabid attack of the Boston Puritans or the rude clap-trap 

^Leaves of Grass Imprints. 



144 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

of his New York confreres. The literary coterie and the 
parlour flutists writhed in listening to this formidable bass. 
This bearded giant, with the manners of a docker, who 
thundered his raucous verses and aspired to the sacred title 
of bard! It was too droll. A man unshaven and vulgar, a 
buffoon, who knew nothing of rhyme, and who showed him- 
self thoroughly ignorant of the niceties which make a real 
poet, such as salons and academies honour 1 . . . . This 
brute makes a sensational entrance into literature, with his 
slow, heavy tread, like the roll of the elephant. He should 
be returned to his zoological garden. . . . 

Walt was especially the victim of venomous attacks of a 
clique of journalists and litterateurs, from whom he always 
kept aloof. All the coterie more or less conscientiously 
showed its malice in covering Walt with epigrams and 
jests. Walt Whitman was a vulgar advertiser, too mediocre 
to be distinguished in the usual ways of literature: he had 
published this extraordinary work merely to attract 
violent attention to himself. So that instead of being de- 
fended by the New York group, as prototype of a new litera- 
ture, completely free of New England influence, the author 
of Leaves of Grass more than the insults of Boston had to 
meet the assault of these men who harassed him because he 
was not of them, and from the height of their pettiness, they 
had but contempt for this rudes indigestaque moles. . . . 
Walt on his part had but sorry esteem for the "New York 
scribblers." 2 

In a cursory review of this singular brochure of delirious 
pages of ineptitude and savage enmity, an admirable little 
monument erected among so many in all ages to human 
stupidity, one sees all that Walt had to endure these first 
years — and long afterward — the calvary which he had to 
climb, with no one near to support him except his own 



i W. S.JKennedy: Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, pp. 97-98. 
2H. Traubel: With Wall Whitman in Camden, pp. 55-61. 



WALT INSULTED 145 

magnificent impassiveness , his own pride of the strong man. 
He was alone with his work and his immense optimism, and 
he listened to the insults. For the man himself as much as 
the book — the man whom he had put into his book was the 
victim of calumnies. We can understand their fierceness if 
we consider as a parallel instance what Emile Zola endured 
when he began. In the paragraphs of the dailies he is shown 
as a blend of the bully, the satyr, and the clown. Stories 
were hawked about in which he sometimes figured as an 
omnibus driver, who dismounted to prepare his poetical 
salmagundi, sometimes as a kind of Buffalo Bill in red shirt 
and boots prepared to fight the buffalo. By the vastness of 
his message he had sown the storm and he commenced to 
reap it. His capacity as a great innovator was justified by 
the fury which he encountered. 

The need of quiet and the out-of-doors after the work 
of printing his book and the scandal which it called forth 
drove the poet to the wilds of his island. He needed to be 
alone with himself and nature, that nature in whose presence 
he had written some of his first pages; to be close to the sea 
which had revealed to him the rhythm of his poems, whose 
rude voice came to him again to justify the rudeness of his 
verses as when he reread them walking on the beach. . . . 
"When the book everywhere raised such a storm of anger and 
condemnation," he said to his friend, Bucke, "I went 
to the head of Long Island and remained there the end of the 
summer and the entire autumn — the happiest of my life — 
around Shelter Island and Peconic Bay. I went to New 
York later, confirmed in the resolution from which I have 
never been separated — to follow my poetical enterprise 
according to my own way, and to complete it the best I 
could." 1 

Fowler & Wells, his publishers, printed and bound an 
edition of a thousand copies; at least they made the plates, 
to be prepared for a large issue. In the face of the tempest 

iBucke: Walt Whitman, p. 26. 



146 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

which Leaves of Grass raised they did not wish to compromise 
their business, then prosperous, and perhaps feared the law- 
suits threatened by some: they suspended the sale. The 
number of copies sold could not be counted : it was not large, 
but there was some undeniable progress. Of the first 
edition, no more than one or two copies were asked for — some 
hundreds of this one were disposed of because of the sentence 
from Emerson in gold letters on the back, and the noise it 
made — enough to cover the expense of the publishers. 

But the final result proved identical: after two trials at 
sea Walt's ship was forced to reenter port because of the 
violence of contrary winds. He had to wait the propitious 
moment. He waited four years. 

Notwithstanding this, the second appearance of Leaves of 
Grass made a stir in the better literary circles. The work 
was provocative, it attacked prudery and literary prejudices. 
And out of all the controversy, a result, the most important 
of all, came: the battle began. The scandal roused by the 
bigots and snobs exercised the peril of complete indifference. 

They were present at the first skirmishes of a battle which 
lasted during the poet's life, and which endures to-day, for or 
against Leaves of Grass. The first protesters were to be the 
surer builders of the final victory. 

In the eyes of a few Walt became a personality — strange, 
detestable, or attractive — as he was, for ten years, among the 
crowd of his anonymous comrades of the people. The most 
interesting call which he received after the edition of 1856 
was from Thoreau, who came to see him in Brooklyn one day 
in November. The author of Walden, another great book 
which appeared two years before, was accompanied by 
Bronson Alcott, the transcendentalist philosopher, who had 
already come to see Walt. Both were intimates of Emerson. 
If Alcott seemed to have admired Walt Whitman unre- 
servedly, the latter made, upon "the young god Pan" as 
Emerson called his friend Thoreau, an impression curious 
and profound, which we find described with admirable sin- 



WALT INSULTED 147 

cerity in two of his letters to Harrison Blake. 1 The lover 
of nature and the anarchist dreamer found himself both 
attracted and repelled by the florid-faced giant and his un- 
usual book, which won him by bewildering him. His in- 
stinct of the primitive and his artistic sensibility carried him 
forcefully toward the man who translated with such power 
the elemental emotions of life, but his savage misanthropy 
separated him from the passionate lover of crowds. Thoreau 
was truly much impressed — and did not conceal it — by the 
personality of Whitman not less than by his poetical message. 
His testimony has a singular value. He expected to be met 
by a loud-voiced boxer, with rowdyish manners, and he 
found himself before a good Colossus, gentle and calm, whose 
flushed face contrasted not less astonishingly with his gray 
beard, than his simple and courteous manners clashed with 
the picture made of him, from his poems. " He is apparently 
the greatest democrat which the world has seen," wrote 
Thoreau in recalling his visit. "He suggests sometimes 
something superhuman ... he is a great type." 
Thoreau told Walt that Leaves of Grass reminded him of the 
great oriental poems and asked if he knew them. Walt an- 
swered, "No, tell me about them." One passage of their con- 
versation was sufficient to flash the difference in their spiritual 
outlook. The Walden hermit expressed unreservedly all the 
contempt the crowd inspired in him, universal suffrage, 
politics, adding, "What is there in the people?" and Walt 
was shocked in his intimate feeling. It seemed to him that 
Thoreau insulted the good people of Brooklyn of whom he 
was proud, and his comrade workers. 2 

Here was a curious instance, enough to weaken all possible 
conjectures: alone, opposed by silence and execration, fine 
souls, men of letters like Emerson, Thoreau, Sanborn, 
Conway, whom education, mode of life, heredity, should 
have kept aloof from this poet, recognized the particular 



l H. D. Thoreau: Letters to Various Persons, pp. 141-2, 146-8. 
*H. H. Gilchrist: Anne Gilchrist, p. 237. 



148 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

grandeur of the man and his book. From the first, it was 
only the Concord group who were aware that something out 
of the usual and truly new had sprung from the American 
soil — however serious may have been their reserve. "I feel 
that he is essentially foreign to me," wrote Thoreau after 
his visit to Brooklyn; "but his appearance captivates 
me. . . ." And as Leaves of Grass unchained the light- 
nings of Boston, the fortress of Puritanism, it transpires that 
Walt had, in Massachusetts, his first admirers and his most 
irreconcilable adversaries. The same year Emerson sent 
to Carlyle the volume which he was the first to salute, and 
with it this note : "One book, last summer, came out in New 
York, a nondescript monster, which yet had terrible eyes and 
buffalo strength, and was indisputably American — which I 
thought to send you; but the book throve so badly with the 
few to whom I showed it, and wanted good morals so much, 
that I never did. Yet I believe now, again, I shall. It is 
called 'Leaves of Grass,' — was written and printed by a 
journeyman printer in Brooklyn, New York, named Walter 
Whitman; and after you have looked into it, if you think, as 
you may, that it is only auctioneer's inventory of a ware- 
house, you can light your pipe with it." * Emerson spoke in 
the same way to another, with his sweet smile and his pene- 
trating irony in which there was no malice, that Leaves of 
Grass affected him as a compound of Bhagavad-Gita and the 
New York Herald. Cleverness was respected at Concord 
and humour always had its rights. The speech circulated 
and was interpreted as an epigram without reflecting that 
always in the deep thought of Emerson there was perhaps 
something implied in that pleasantry. 

So, for the second time, Walt did not succeed in delivering 
his message. A more serene season had undoubtedly come. 
In the interval, he reconsidered a favourite project which he 
had already had in mind, when he was seeking a means of ex- 
pression, that of lecturing throughout the country. He 

^Correspondence of Carlyle and Emerson, H, p. 251, 



WALT INSULTED 149 

needed to be understood. For this he would have to induce 
others to understand. Perhaps if he were to explain himself 
face to face with the public, he would force a hearing, his 
living and magnetic word would penetrate the wall of mis- 
understanding which separated him from the world. He 
needed to create a "popular foretaste of himself" 1 which 
should prepare the way for his message. He even formu- 
lated his project in a note, found among his papers after his 
death. 

From now on, two concurrent expressions. They are to expand, amic- 
able, coming from a common source, but each carrying its individual and 
distinct mark. 

First, the Poems, Leaves of Grass as of Intuitions, the Soul, the Body, 
(male or female) descending laws, social routine, creeds, literature, to 
celebrate the inherent, the red blood one man in himself and one woman 
in herself. Songs of thoughts and wants hitherto suppressed by writers. 
Or it may be avowed to give the personality of Walt Whitman, out and 
out evil and good whatever he is or thinks, that sharply set down in a book, 
the spirit commanding it. 

Second, Lectures, of Reasoning, comparisons, Politics, the intellectual, 
the aesthetic, the desire for knowledge, the sense of richness, from an 
American point of view. Also in Lectures, the meaning of Religion as 
statement, everything from an American point of view. 2 

He thus thought of fashioning for the United States two 
"athletic volumes," for his printed lectures would form 
another book, which should explain the first. He lingered 
a while about this project, finally to abandon it. He left 
the Leaves to battle alone for itself. People would under- 
stand when the time came. 

In any case, the opinion of the outside world had no in- 
fluence upon his real self. He lost nothing of his immanent 
optimism; he abided the moment to launch his bark a third 
time. He had time with him. . . . Those who carry 
in their breasts eternal things always have time. No — Walt 
was not hurried, and above all, he had no reason to abandon 

Wamden Edition, Introduction, p. liv. 
7 Id., pp. lv-lvi. 



150 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

his destiny: "I am sure of one thing," writes Bucke, "and 
it is that the attitude and course of Walt Whitman these 
following years (the failure of the 1856 edition) form the 
most heroic part of all his career. He went on his way with 
the same enjoyment of life, the same ruddy countenance, the 
same free, elastic stride, through the tumult of sneers and 
hisses, as if he were surrounded by applause; not the slight- 
est degree abashed or roused to resentment and opposition. 
The poems written directly after the collapse of this second 
edition are, if possible, more sympathetic, exultant, arrogant, 
and make larger claims than any." 1 

As to Walt's occupations during the four years following 
the second edition of Leaves of Grass no precise detail has 
come to us. He continued probably his favourite mode of 
life — moderate work — he gave six or seven hours a day to 
remunerative work 2 — interrupted by idling on the streets, 
on the ferries, hours passed with the frank lads of cordial 
manners, or in excursions on the bay or to the country. 
We only know, thanks to vistas on his life then, that they 
were sunny, communal years, when he lived, more freely than 
ever, the life of his poems. The intensity of his poetical 
labour at this time proves that the great part of it was given 
to the constructing his book, which grew a story every time 
it was returned to him. 

Not only he reached then the age of his greatest creative 
power, but he is close to his fortieth year, quickly reached, 
quickly passed, when his individuality as man was supreme. 
His marvellous health was in full tide, and all his faculties, 
including the one which empowered him to look into the 
souls of men as into an open book, reached their complete 
flowering. A rough and royal beauty was wholly his, such 
as still strikes us in an admirable portrait, undated, but 
which must have been about I860. 3 His contact with 



iBucke: Walt Whitman, pp. 141-142. 

m.: p. 34. 

'Reproduced in Camden Edition, I, p. 



WALT INSULTED 151 

everyday humanity was never more fervent, his need to 
absorb and to expand never more fully satisfied than then. 
It was between 1855 and 1861 that he passed a great number 
of hours with his friends, the pilots and stage drivers, and 
that he knitted in the world of workingmen the most solid 
bonds. Thomas Gae's testimony of Walt at this time is 
vivid — his gladiatorial frame, his tender solicitude toward a 
hard-handed band of men. 1 

It is evident also from his notes that an intense intellectual 
labour filled these years. He began to absorb history, geog- 
raphy, literature, by his own method, that is to say, without 
method, but abundantly. He was never in a hurry, and he 
appeared always to be idle: yet he had time for everything. 
It was believed that he united in himself many men's lives. 

Above all, his poetical development absorbed him. He 
carries his poems in manuscript and reads them to right 
listeners. It was thus he read that superb lyric "Out of the 
Cradle Endlessly Rocking" to the Price family, his Brooklyn 
neighbours, and explained the incident which inspired it. 
Strange abstraction and exaltation marked his moods. 2 



iBucke: Walt Whitman, pp. 32-34. 
Hd.: pp. 25-31. 



XI 
EMERSON AND WHITMAN 

Two or three years after the second edition, Leaves of 
Grass sprouted wonderfully; Walt had in manuscript a 
hundred new poems. The summer of his work was come. 
Thus, one fact was proved, that despite the violent rebuke to 
his previous efforts, he had succeeded in propagating a cer- 
tain "advanced taste of himself." The Boston publishers, 
Thayer and Eldridge, open to new experiments, offered to 
arrange for a new edition of his book, which had been out 
of print since 1856. i 

Toward the close of the winter of 1860 Walt went to 
Boston to supervise the printing of a volume, a task which 
was and remained to the end, for a skilled workman like 
himself, minute, slow, and personal. He remained there the 
entire spring. The environment was new to him; he was as 
yet unacquainted with New England, so he studied at leisure 
the life of the street, the city, and its suburbs. 

Some happy memories cling to this visit. Emerson put 
himself out many times to see Whitman, and it is in the 
course of these interviews that the two men had a conversa- 
tion destined to be famous. " In Boston when people have to 
talk, they go to the Common; let us go there," said Emerson. 
That day, he wished to make himself thoroughly clear to his 
friend on a point which he had at heart; the matter was 
important, at the moment when Whitman was preparing a 
new edition of h's poems. Some years later, when again in 
Boston, Walt summarized in these words the substance of 
this historic conversation: 

I walk'd for two hours, of a bright sharp February mid-day twenty-one 
years ago, with Emerson, then in his prime, keen, physically and morally 

152 



EMERSON AND WHITMAN 153 

magnetic, arm'd at every point, and when he chose, wielding the emotional 
just as well as the intellectual. During those two hours he was the talker 
and I the listener. It was an argument-statement, reconnoitring, review, 
attack, and pressing home (like an army corps in order, artillery, cavalry, 
infantry), of all that could be said against that part (and a main part) in 
the construction of my poems, "Children of Adam." More precious than 
gold to me that dissertation — afforded me, ever after, this strange and 
paradoxical lesson; each point of E.'s statement was unanswerable, no 
judge's charge ever more complete or convincing, I could never hear the 
points better put — and then I felt down in my soul the clear and un- 
mistakable conviction to disobey all, and pursue my own way. "What 
have you to say then to such things?" said E., pausing in conclusion. 
"Only that while I can't answer them at all, I feel more settled than ever 
to adhere to my own theory, and exemplify it," was my candid response. 
Whereupon we went and had a good dinner at the American House. And 
thenceforward I never waver'd or was touch 'd with qualms (as I confess 
I had been two or three times before) . l **- ^ 

Emerson appealed to him with a real and pressing affection 
of an elder brother, manifesting all the communicable fervour 
of a great soul; and Walt, with whom firm sweetness was 
stronger than his more decisive words, felt deeply touched 
by the warm sympathy which Emerson showed him that 
day. He did not reply; he had within him reasons which 
reason did not know. 2 

The whole relation between Walt Whitman and Ralph 
Waldo Emerson may be disposed of here. 3 It presents a 
double aspect: work to work and man to man. This petty 
problem might be judged futile: however, is it not well to 
determine the situation and reciprocal attitude of the most 
original thinker and of the greatest poet of the United States? 
An Emerson and a Whitman are of such importance to the 
world that nothing obscure should subsist between their 
renown. 

Had Whitman read Emerson before 1855, date of the first 
edition of Leaves of Grass ? Some, basing upon the evident 



^Complete Prose, pp. 183-184. 

2 W. S. Kennedy: Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, p. 77. 

*The order of this chapter is reversed. Tr. 



154 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

analogy between such conceptions as are equally dear to the 
two writers, have been quick to see in the Essays the initial 
source and the determining cause of the first draught of 
Leaves of Grass. J. T. Trowbridge notably represents this 
opinion; it is amplified by George William Curtis in Putnam's 
Magazine about 1860, and oftenrenewed since by those whom 
the overwhelming originality of Whitman offended. 

Trowbridge, admiring Leaves of Grass only with reticence, 
declares nevertheless that nothing equal to Song of Myself 
had appeared in English sirce Shakespeare. 1 But for him 
the first part of the book reflects the influence of Emerson. 
This assertion Trowbridge supports by different facts, such 
as certain affirmations of Walt in his reply to Emerson, pub- 
lished in the Appendix to the Edition of 1856, and the send- 
ing of the copy of Leaves of Grass to the latter; but above all, 
on a declaration which Whitman made to himself in 1860 at 
Boston. While Walt was working at carpentry about 1854, 
he read one day, while taking his solitary mid-day meal, a 
volume of Emerson which he had put into his basket with 
his luncheon. It was a revelation. Filled just then with 
vague aspirations, this electric contact illuminated his very 
depths, and discovered him to himself. He formulated the 
event in these characteristic terms: "I was simmering, 
simmering, simmering; Emerson brought me to boil. " 2 

Opposed to this statement, which Trowbridge energetically 
supports, there is an express statement of WTiitman himself 
which contradicts it absolutely. Being frankly asked by 
his friend, W. S. Kennedy, as to the fact, Whitman declared, 
in a letter dated February 15, 1887, that he had not read 
Emerson before publishing his first edition. 3 Already an- 
other of Whitman's friends, John Burroughs, who wrote his 
Notes on Walt Whitman in 1867 from direct information 
from him, was careful to state this. It is after Emerson's 



*W. S. Kennedy: Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, p. 79. 

2 J. T. Trowbridge: Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, the Atlantic Monthly, February, 1902, p. 163. 

3 W. S. Kennedy: Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, p. 76. j 



EMERSON AND WHITMAN 155 

famous letter saluting Leaves of Grass, and his visit to 
Whitman in the summer of 1855, that the latter read Nature 
and the Essays; he remembers putting the volume in his 
little basket with his food and napkin one time, when, as 
usual, he went to pass the whole day on the then deserted 
beach of Coney Island to read, to bathe, to lie in the sun, and 
dream. 1 Walt declares, moreover, in this same letter, like 
many other young men, he had at one time "Emerson on the 
brain," also, he says, "that came late and affected only 
the surface." And he considers wit i satisfaction this 
crisis of his youth a stage habitual to "young men of eager 
minds." 2 

This is the debate. The contradiction looks flagrant. To 
resolve it and to show that it is but apparent, W. S.Kennedy 
has expended much erudition and eloquence. According 
to him, Walt knew the reputation of Emerson before 1855, 
and could and did read the reviews of his works and some 
articles on him in the Democratic Review, in which Whitman 
was, as we know, habitual collaborator between 1841 and 
1847, and where many pages of copious citations appeared on 
the philosophy already known in intellectual America. In 
a word, according to W. S. Kennedy, Walt then knew Emer- 
son without knowing him outright, which amply justifies 
the sending of a copy of Leaves of Grass. 3 

To our notion, the question should be envisaged from a 
point of view somewhat different. First of all, it is not 
necessary to accept literally, we believe, either the statement 
of Trowbridge or that of Whitman. To that of Whitman, 
especially, there is no reason to attach an absolute impor- 
tance. . It is not questioning his greatness to state his superb 
indifference to dates. All who have studied him before 
know this tendency to inaccuracy in the matter of figures, 
which was certainly characteristic, though illness and old 



'John Burroughs: Notes, pp. 16-17. 

^Complete Prose, p. 317. 

3 W. S. Kennedy: Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, pp. 79-83. 



156 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

age may have aggravated it; and, even in the course of his 
reply to Kennedy, where he declares that he did not know 
Emerson before 1855, he deceives himself by ten years with- 
out knowing it. Besides, being endowed with the curiosity 
of an "omniverous reader" as was Walt in his youth, and 
his interest so keen for all manifestation of the thought of 
his time, it is indeed difficult to conceive that he had not been 
in contact with Emerson, then the most original thinker, of 
whom the press spoke, whose lectures and books aroused 
such enthusiasm and discussion between 1845 and 9 55. And 
having known and absorbed him — if only by fragments, his 
way of reading — he could not but be seized with his signi- 
fication and with his greatness, not but feel the rapport — 
sure, intimate, and marvellous — between his idea, which he 
had not yet formulated, and the invigorating, new, refreshing 
conception of Emerson. In truth, he must have felt strength- 
ened by a voice coming from a region entirely unlike his 
own. There, we believe, is found the sense and explanation 
of his open letter to his "dear Friend and Master" written in 
1856, when he experienced by his own confession a crisis of 
Emersonism, and when, exhalting Individualism, "this new 
continent" of interior America, he added: "These shores, 
it is you who have discovered them. I say that it is you 
who have conducted the States, that it is you who have 
conducted me to them. . . ." There is, moreover, a 
hypothesis which seems to confirm — and to convert even 
into a quasi-certitude — a note from Whitman's hand recov- 
ered among his papers, one which accompanies a review 
article of May, 1847, 1 a note which establishes unmistakably 
that the thought of Emerson was familiar to him when he 
wrote it. It was not in the least necessary that he absorb a 
whole volume of Emerson; with his extraordinary intuition, 
some paragraphs were enough for him to penetrate the funda- 
mental thought of the philosophy. 

I avow that these affirmations appear to me superfluous: 

^Camden Edition, IX, pp. 159-16D. 



EMERSON AND WHITMAN 157 

to speak the truth, the fact is not to be doubted. Walt 
would not have been Walt if he had kept Emerson outside 
of his vast search into life and contemporary ideas. I am, 
therefore, disposed to charge to his faulty memory the state- 
ment in his letter to W. S. Kennedy. I also think, conscious 
as he was of his fundamental originality, of the perfect 
authenticity of his poem and of his message, he would show 
a certain momentary impatience in listening to his spiritual 
affinity with Emerson reasoned about — some small souls 
disposed to make him his "disciple." Whence the tone a 
little lively and very categorical of that letter, where he 
so vehemently and without restriction declares an inde- 
pendence. 

Shall it be said that I accept in its rigour the verbal decla- 
ration which Trowbridge attributes to Y/hitman? By no 
means. Admitting that he had known fragments of Emer- 
son in the years previous to his poem is not at all equivalent 
to claiming that the author of Song of Myself is indebted to 
him for his first inspiration. It is impossible not to see in 
this assertion a pure naivete. What have such or such 
philosophy, such or such written pages, to do with the in- 
spiration of Walt Whitman? Leaves of Grass has sprung 
directly from reality itself, from the heart of concrete things 
in contact with his personality. It is the very song of things, 
of beings, till then considered as improper to be translated in- 
to poetry, which takes flight from an individual. Things, 
beings, pageants, that living ensemble, these are responsible 
for this poem. Emerson, who evolved in a sphere totally 
opposed to that of Walt, could but give him a momentary 
support — perhaps precious, precisely because by all which 
differentiated them. We can easily admit that a certain 
chapter or theme from such a thinker affected him like a 
spur. But Emerson, most surely, was not for Whitman 
what East River pilots had been, harbour workers, actors at 
the Battery, Broadway coachmen, the spectacle of the Bay, 
Long Island shores, or the towns along the Mississippi or the 



158 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

Great Lakes; these are what furnished the real stuff of a book 
which, according to the picturesque expression of Kennedy, 
juts up "as unique in character as the flora and fauna of a 
Galapagos Island emergent from the blue waters of the 
Pacific." 1 It is this multitudinous humanity and the large- 
ness of nature which were the primitive source and •continu- 
ance of his inspiration, which nothing written was capable 
of determining. 

To say that Whitman is a differentiated product of 
Emerson's philosophy is to declare that under another 
climate the elephant could spring from the deer, or the bison 
from the peacock. Emerson and Whitman belonged to 
different species. Thus in a certain sense the poet was 
fully right when he wrote to his friend: "It is of no im- 
portance whether I read Emerson before starting or not." 2 
The originality of this book is the most absolute perhaps 
which has ever been manifested in literature. 

It would be equally obtuse not to see the concordances 
which actually exist between the two men. Emphatically 
opposed to their heredity, their education, their tempera- 
ment, their spiritual tendency, yet upon certain points their 
parallelism is undeniable. Why would he not joyously 
salute Leaves of Grass at its birth, he who seven years before 
traced among others the prophetic lines of Man Thinking? 
which stir us with an electric thrill when, in reading them, 
we think of Walt Whitman? And what more natural than 
these concordances? We have remarked that from 1845 to 
'50, an intense period of renewal of the literature and the 
soul of America, certain ideas were in the air, which all con- 
temporaries were absorbing more or less. Some common 
aspirations, felt by Emerson and by Whitman some years 
apart, were formulated by them in their vastly different work. 

Whitman could not cast a shadow on the suave and won- 



*W. S. Kennedy: Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, p. 79. 

*Id.:p.76. 

3 The author must refer to The American Scholar of Emerson. Tr. 



EMERSON AND WHITMAN 159 

derful Emerson. To exalt the first is not to diminish the 
second. They are two great priests of Individualism and 
Optimism: one issues from the sphere of intellect, the other 
from the sphere of life lived. Each, in his way, occupies 
a supreme place, though Walt Whitman, from the more uni- 
versal point of view, immensely surpasses Emerson. 

What were, on the other hand, the personal relations of 
the two men? What, above all, was Emerson's intimate 
opinion of Whitman? The question is not worth stopping 
for, except that by reason of it Whitman was subjected to 
certain base calumnies. We have Emerson's enthusiastic 
inspired letter, written under the impulse of his admiration 
and his emotion, when he received Leaves of Grass; the real 
Emerson is discovered there. When Walt, universally re- 
viled, published it as his defense and fixed a phrase of it in 
gold letters on the back of the second edition, Emerson was 
for a moment vexed; 1 but he remained outwardly calm. He 
saw immediately all the embarrassment which that untimely 
publication was bound to bring him as a patron of V^hitman. 
Emerson was not deceived; there was tumult enough, and 
some printed in full-length letters that he was crazy. This 
hue-and-cry was annoying to a man thoroughly peaceable, 
accustomed to the quiet of his closet. Then when four 
years later the third edition of Leaves of Grass appeared, 
Emerson strongly regretted seeing the pages retained which 
in their conversation in Boston Common he had begged Walt 
to suppress. Side by side with the radical Emerson, who is 
one of the most exalted minds, the most advanced, the most 
admirable of the age, there was another Emerson of univer- 
sity education, philosophic, clerical, bookish, formal, de- 
scendant of an ecclesiastical line, the eminent respectable 
citizen of literary and bourgeois Concord, slave of incredible 
prejudices, the Emerson, for example, who said to a young 
girl visiting him on Sunday who wished to play the piano: 



iBliss Perry: Walt Whitman, p. 115. 



160 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

"No, no, I pray you . . . to-day is Sunday." 1 The 
Emerson of life and the Emerson of the book were not al- 
ways identical, as was Whitman. To that Emerson, whom 
we no longer know, but who, at that time, was as real as the 
other, some rudeness of the artisan-poet, as well as his vivac- 
ity of language, was not acceptable. But there were first 
of all Emerson's family and his immediate neighbours to 
whom the personality of the "rough" of Brooklyn was rather 
odious, and who looked upon Emerson's admiration for his 
book as a regrettable weakness. These friends, people 
bigoted and narrow, were pleased, because of the calumnies 
and tittle-tattle, to exaggerate the annoyance of Emerson at 
the time of the stormy publication of his letter, to mar some 
innocent pleasantries he let fall, and to transform into posi- 
tive proof against the man, the antipathy which Emerson 
experienced toward the most coloured passages of Leaves of 
Grass. Indeed, later Woodbury made himself the inter- 
preter of this mischievous enmity, in attributing to Emerson 
various perversities intended for Whitman. 2 

These calumnies, bigoted and "respectable," do not bear 
investigation. The truth remains that the great and loyal 
Emerson never retracted the enthusiastic words of his letter, 
nor withdrew his friendship. There is only needed, to prove 
it, certain private letters, which peremptorily establish 
this and which some day will surely be published: 3 the atti- 
tude of Emerson leaves no doubt as to his sentiments. When 
overseeing the printing of his book it was Emerson who 
many times came from Concord to see him. 4 Would he have 
done this if he was seriously angry at the publication of his 
letter? And, in general, in his personal relations with Walt, 
it was always he who made advances, who sought him, at- 
tracted by that enormous power which he felt but could not 
define because it surpassed him. Walt, it seems, when in- 

iH. H. Gilchrist: Anne Gilchrist, pp. 233-234. 

2 Woodbury: Talks with Emerson. 

»I. Hull Piatt: Walt Whitman, p. 31; H. Traubel: With Walt Whitman In Camden,Voh I, p. 180. 

4 John Burroughs: Walt Whitman, pp. 66-67. 



EMERSON AND WHITMAN 161 

vited by Emerson to come to Concord declined the in- 
vitation, true to an instinctive dislike of a purely literary 
company, which he would be sure to meet there. It was 
inevitably noticed that in preparing his collection of poems 
for Parnassus, in 1875, Emerson did not include a single 
fragment of Whitman. The reason for this very probably 
is that he thought Leaves of Grass rather as rhythmic prose 
or some other new form than as poetry properly so called. 
Emerson did not by that disclaim Whitman; and in various 
circumstances he knew how to offer the poet some evidence 
of his personal attachment and his consideration. 

Walt, on his part, showed a deep affection for Emerson. 
He showed this to the man as well as to his writings. "From 
the first visit which he made at Brooklyn in 1855 and the 
two hours which we passed together, I experienced an af- 
fection, and a singular attachment for him, by his contact, 
conversation, company, magnetism ... we probably 
had a dozen (perhaps twenty) of these interviews, conver- 
sations, promenades, etc., — five or six times (sometimes in 
New York, sometimes in Boston) we had good long dinners 
together. I was very happy — I do not think, nevertheless, 
that I was entirely at my ease with him: it was always he 
who did the talking and I am sure that he was equally 
happy 1 . . . ." 

By the tone of certain pages which Walt has written of 
Emerson, it is easily seen how much he revered the man. 
The insistence of Emerson during their famous conversation 
in Boston Common, in wishing to make him suppress the 
passages in Leaves of Grass, not only left no unpleas- 
ant trace in Walt's mind, but he considered it as a proof 
of genuine affection, "which I felt then, and feel to this 
hour, the gratitude and reverence of my life could never 
repay." 2 Walt Whitman judged with clairvoyance the 
writer and thinker, perceiving nicely the "darkness" and 



*W. S. Kennedy: Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, pp. 76-77. 
'Id.: p. 77. 



162 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

"sunny expanses" of his work. He accorded him the first 
place among the poetical initiators of the New World, and gave 
him rank with Washington, Lincoln, and Grant. 1 "Emer- 
son is not far from being our greatest man," he declared 
in 1890, to an English visitor, "in fact, I believe him to be 
our very greatest man." But above all, the solemn, touch- 
ing lines, which he wrote near the new-made grave of Emer- 
son, remain the supreme salutation of Whitman to Emerson : 
"A just man, poised on himself, all-loving, all-enclosing, and 
sane and clear as the sun. . . . It is not we who come to 
consecrate the dead, we reverently come to receive, if so it 
may be, some consecration for ourselves and our daily 
work." 2 

Those who yielding to bigoted and formalist prejudices 
wished to change the relations of these men have but tried to 
tarnish one of the splendid pages of the literary history of the 
United States. It is vain, however; for the last echo of these 
calumnies is vanished, posterity hears only the joyous 
accents of Emerson, saluting Leaves of Grass at its birth and 
the solemn farewell words of Walt Whitman before the coffin 
of the great precursor. 

During his stay in Boston Walt knitted literary friend- 
ships which for a short time were to influence the destiny of 
his book. Again this curious anomaly was proved: it was 
in the Puritan city to whose temperament all the liberal 
instincts of the man and poet were opposed that he found 
comprehensive sympathy. He met in Charles Eldridge, 
his publisher, a real comrade, not less than an admirer. It 
was also during this visit that he made the acquaintance 
of John Townsend Trowbridge. 3 The first edition of Leaves 
of Grass won him instantly, and despite the numerous re- 

^ucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 111. 

^Complete Prose, p. 189. 

3 The account of this meeting — Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, the Atlantic Monthly, February, 
1902. The extract is omitted. It is one of the many pen portraits of Whitman, and another testimony 
to the power of his personality. 



EMERSON AND WHITMAN 163 

serves of his rather formalist character, he did not hesitate 
to reverence the genius of the man whom he met in the first 
hours of his struggle. 

Other interesting memories attach to these months when, 
far from Manhattan, Walt corrected the proofs of his new 
Leaves. It was at this time that he heard Father Taylor, 
pastor of the church for poor sailors, whom some friend, 
Emerson perhaps, had pointed out. He who kept strictly 
away from oratory finds himself more at ease, and nearer 
the infinite in the great cathedral of the world, and was 
deeply stirred by the extraordinary words of the old sailor, 
as much as his parents, in his childhood, had been by the ser- 
mons of Elias Hicks, the Quaker preacher, "with black eyes 
which sparkled at times like meteors." 

Quiet Sunday forenoons, I liked to go down early to the quaint ship 
cabin looking church, where the old man ministered. . . . Father 
Taylor was a moderate-sized man, indeed almost small (reminded me of 
old Booth, the great actor, and my favorite of those and preceding days,) 
well advanced in years, but alert, with mild blue or gray eyes, and good 
presence and voice. Soon as he open'd his mouth I ceas'd to pay any at- 
tention to church or audience, or pictures or lights and shades; a far more 
potent charm entirely sway'd me. ... I remember I felt the deepest 
impression from the old man's prayers, which invariably affected me to 
tears. . . . For when Father Taylor preach'd or pray'd the rhetoric and 
art, the mere words (which usually play such a big part), seem'd altogether 
to disappear, and the live feeling advanced upon you and seized you with 
a power before unknown. Everybody felt this marvelous and awful in- 
fluence. One young sailor, a Rhode Islander, (who came every Sunday, 
and I got acquainted with, and talk'd to once or twice as we went away,) 
told me, "that must be the Holy Ghost we read of in the Testament." 1 

In June or July the book at last appeared. It was a very 
beautiful 12mo, incomparably superior in appearance to 
the other two editions: it is evident in running over these 
456 pages, printed on choice paper, that a serious firm met 
the expense of the volume. Nevertheless, certain unusual 
arrangements preserved its particular stamp. The title on 

^Complete Prose, p. 386. 



164 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WOXtK 

the first page spreads in letters naively written and or- 
namented, and above the date, "1860-61," inscribed at 
the foot of the page, one may read: "year '85 of the States." 
On the cover appeared various primitive emblems, and also 
throughout the volume : a sunrise on the sea, a globe in space, 
a butterfly poised on a hand. Walt did not like the volume 
at all, simple product of confection : he held that the exterior 
should carry the imprint of a personality. The characteris- 
tic likeness which accompanied the first two editions — and 
appeared to the sixth, to accompany ever after the volume 
through its evolution — was replaced by a reproduction of a 
portrait in oil painted by Charles Hine in 1859, in which Walt 
looks like an old sea captain. 

One hundred and twenty -four new poems were added to the 
thirty-three original pieces. The volume was completely 
changed. Not only had it formidably grown, but its frag- 
mentary aspect had disappeared. For the first time it was 
presented as an organic whole with a prelude and a finale; 
and the author in it pronounced already the essential word 
that his book is not a mere book, but a man who comes to 
speak and to offer himself to you; is Procreator who would 
engender a new and haughtier race of men for America and 
for the world, the numberless family of children of the New 
Adam. The poems were distributed in four groups : Demo- 
cratic Songs, Leaves of Grass, Children of Adam, Calamus, 
followed by some others bearing an individual title. 
Obedient to a Quaker impulse, he numbered the months as 
they are in the calendar of Friends: first month, second 
month, etc., instead of January, February, etc. Walt 
was of his time, but he was also of his family; and in 
everything he remained faithful to the interior call. In 
the fourth part, Calamus, he published the thirst for im- 
passioned comradeship, of the close affection of man to man, 
which tormented him to the verge of sorrow, and was indeed 
with him insatiable. 

Although it has been abolished by later manipulations, 



EMERSON AND WHITMAN 165 

this edition is the most highly coloured, the most challeng- 
ing, the most audacious of the editions of Leaves of Grass. 
The Walt Whitman of his fortieth year is there revealed in 
the wild, with all his ardent virility. And despite the suc- 
cessive rearrangements, and of the author's incessant labour 
on his poems, it contains the bulk of the first half of the book, 
as we have it to-day. Between the edition of 1855, the fin- 
ishing touch, that of 1860 marks a decisive advance, in which 
the poems begin to be definitely reduced to order. The 
principal contours of the future edifice are already to be 
found there. 

This time, Whitman was sailing under happy auspices. 
For a serious edition he had the support of a worthy house, 
with its means of publicity, and the vessel with its new rig- 
ging, with its hold reenforced, was big enough to resist the 
gale. The adventure, too, was different. The ship did 
not immediately gain the high sea; it tacked, profiting by 
favourable winds, but making little by little its path. 
And Walt watched his banner float in the rear in the morning 
sun. 

The book had a moderate but sure sale. Two or three 
thousand copies were issued, and was not this a success for 
such a work? For Hve years, because of the fierce opposi- 
tion which Walt's "barbaric yawp" raised, curiosity was 
awakened. One wished to see what was at the bottom of 
this terrible man, whom legend made alternately a clown 
or a satyr. He was not in any case an ordinary man. He 
who had advanced, unhurt by this hooting, roused the in- 
terest of thinking men: and some studied this phenomenon 
in the pages of his book. The extravagances and excesses 
which at first provoked laughter or fury, shocked less this 
time. The public made, in a word, the first step, not to- 
ward acceptance, but toward inquiry. 

The sale of the volume was one sign and the publishers, 
who had faith in their poet, were firm in their determination 
to support him. From time to time a sympathetic review 



166 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

appeared, and Walt, according to his custom, himself came 
to the rescue by sending to friendly papers anonymous arti- 
cles. But the most important point was that a weekly pub- 
lication defended him with great warmth. 1 The New York 
Saturday Press was an aggressive organ, where young writers 
exalted every boldness, they sent sharp arrows at the man- 
darins of literature, and particularly at the majestic Philis- 
tines of Boston : its editor, Henry Clapp, was a frequenter of 
Pfaff's German restaurant, where the "Bohemians," of whom 
Walt was one, met, and where W. D. Ho wells was introduced 
to him in August of the same year. More than all, the 
Atlantic Monthly, the Boston literary review which Lowell 
edited, had shown some consideration for him in publishing 
a poem in the April number. 2 Thayer and Eldridge pub- 
lished also Leaves of Grass Imprints* 

There is then ground for hope; the dawn of attention seems 
to be breaking. Perhaps in the end Walt will succeed in ful- 
filling his mission. But it was ordained that the audacious 
enterprise was to meet disaster. For the greater glory of 
the poet, perhaps, adverse fate was not immediately van- 
quished, and the number of obstacles kept pace with the 
formidable advance of the book on its time. 

The ship of Walt, set out this time in fairer weather, was 
stranded on a bank which no pilot could have avoided. It 
was the eve of the Secession War, the vast event which ab- 
sorbs everything, swallowing all which is written or pub- 
lished of the poems or of the attention given them. Wlien 
it burst, the publishing house was ruined. The firm, Thayer 
and Eldridge, whose receipts were not forthcoming, failed, 
dragging Leaves of Grass in its fall. And all the hopes 
founded on this edition were suddenly and pitiably mowed 
down. 

Then bad luck pursued Walt for six years. The book a 



tfohn Burroughs: Notes, p. 1. 
2 Bliss Perry: Walt Whitman, p. 127. 
s Bueke: Walt Whitman, pp. 199-200. 



EMERSON AND WHITMAN 167 

third time disappeared. But what could not disappear 
again, what was the shelter from all storms, and what was 
infinitely more important than the success or failure of one 
particular edition, is that some people in the world — very 
few indeed, but by the inherent value of the work, its in- 
fallible power of contagion, that was enough — a few people 
acquired a taste for the book. And it was never to be torn 
from the heart of them. Walt had been heard by perhaps 
a dozen elect souls, who would never let his message perish, 
but who would exalt and transmit it. His tree had taken 
root. It was the commencement of everything, the prelude 
of future victories. Leaves of Grass would never from now 
on be without defense against the champions of "poesy" and 
"morality." 

This edition of 1860 notably won two men who lead a 
company of great companions, two men who are not only 
to be dear and faithful friends, but champions of his work 
before the world: John Burroughs, future poet and nat- 
uralist, and William Douglas O'Connor. Walt met O'Con- 
nor one day in the office of Eldridge, his publisher, who was 
bringing out a novel of his. He was a journalist who, like 
Thoreau, lost his place for having ardently espoused the 
cause of John Brown. 1 

He was a young man of twenty-eight, enthusiastic, gener- 
ous, good looking, one of the noblest natures, the completest, 
the most attractive which it was possible to meet, and Walt 
was immediately drawn to him. He merely saw him then: 
presently circumstances brought about a close association. 
Besides, a new soil was prepared in which the seed sowed 
by the poet should germinate. Some copies of the two pre- 
vious editions reached England without provoking any 
other emotion than rare and obscure attacks. But that of 
1860, accepted by some young men, was destined, in a few 
years, to win for Walt fervent admiration. 

In the hall, until then empty, where the bard of the New 

»H B. Binns: Life of Walt Whitman, p. 190. 



168 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

World put forth his strange verses, some listeners entered 
very softly. And they heard that powerful and tender voice, 
stirred in spite of themselves ; and the impassive man pursued 
his recital, as before the limitless audience of the humanity 
of the future, whose judgment he seems to foresee. 



PART FOUR 
THE WOUND DRESSER 
WASHINGTON (1862-1865) 



XII 

AT THE BEDSIDE OF THE DYING 

However surfeited this life may already appear, a sudden 
event is about to penetrate and fill it, which, without break- 
ing its unity, is its dividing line. Between the man such as 
we know him and the man after the war one sees the passing 
of a profound emotion; and of the numerous breaks in his 
life this is the most violent. Walt for many years finds 
himself torn from his home, from himself, from his work; 
he is plunged into a feverish, tragic atmosphere, charged with 
pain and poison, all in the accomplishment of a sad and 
radiant duty whence will issue at once the helplessness of 
his old age and the perfection of his personality. We are 
now at the threshold of a unique experience, some aspects of 
which envelop a sacred mystery of humanity: this much- 
alive man gives to it the unsuspected limit of his strength, 
showing through it all the legendary and superhuman 
individual which he had introduced in his poems and 
whose reality was thus to be proved. Walt, after having 
offered himself to everyone in his poems, is about to give 
himself in person to thousands of human beings athirst 
for him. 

The storm clouds were gathering when he returned to 
New York. The nomination of Abraham Lincoln to the 
presidency precipitated the crisis; the Union was threatened, 
and some of the slave states formed themselves into a con- 
federation to maintain at any cost the privilege on which 
their prosperity was built. It was the eve of the Civil War, 
in which North and South were about to engage in a pro- 
longed, bloody struggle. 

Whitman, who since his youth had followed with atten- 

171 



172 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

tive eye the inner polities of his country, and who knew its 
hidden springs, was passionately interested in the crisis 
at hand. He had foreseen it and he knew that a grave and 
decisive hour had come. Under his immense exterior apathy 
he vibrated intensely to all that convulsed the national life. 
He was super-American. And to him it mattered more than 
to all the world that America, bearer of the modern idea, 
the democratic idea, his idea, should come victorious from 
the crisis. The Civil War was the great shock of his life. 

In some lines of touching simplicity, he noted the first mo- 
ment of the redoubtable conflict. 1 Walt lived through the 
beginning of the war in the atmosphere of the street, sharing 
the emotion of the crowd and the stupor following the first 
defeat. His whole being was seized: the feverish reading 
of telegrams, the noise of passing convoys in the street, the 
marching of troops, all pushed into the background the 
normal preoccupations of his life. And at the sight of the 
great city which was arming for war, impassioned odes to 
the banner of the Union, the Union in peril, burst from his 
heart like a cry of love. 

Forty years had I in my city seen soldiers parading, 

Forty years as a pageant, till unawares the lady of this teeming and tur- 
bulent city, 
Sleepless amid her ships, her houses, her incalculable wealth, 
With her million children around her, suddenly, 
At dead of night, at news from the south, 
Incens'd struck with clinch'd hand the pavement. 

A shock electric, the night sustained it, 

Till with ominous hum our hive at daybreak pour'd out its myriads. 
From the houses then and the workshops, and through all the doorways, 
Leapt they tumultuous, and lo! Manhattan arming. . . . 
War! an arm'd race is advancing! the welcome for battle, no turning away; 
War! be it weeks, months, or years, an arm'd race is advancing to welcome 
it. 2 



Complete Prose, p. 16. 
^Leaves of Grass, pp. 219-221. 



AT THE BEDSIDE OF THE DYING 173 

In New York men were enlisting en masse; his brother 
George, one of the first. He himself was not enrolled among 
the combatants; the inner call, which he followed in every- 
thing, did not bid him go. He watched, listened passion- 
ately, leaving to circumstances the responsibility of deciding 
his part in the drama. He knew the South and was far 
from hating it, but his fervent sympathy was now with the 
Northern cause. Victory for the North meant salvation 
for the Union. Not a doubt as to this, and any other opinion 
to him was impious. 

Presently the interior call was heard in an unexpected man- 
ner. While running through the daily lists of the wounded 
in the terrible battle of Fredericksburg (December 13, 1862) 
he read the name of his brother George, who had made the en- 
tire campaign with the 51st Regiment of the volunteers of 
New York, a simple soldier who was already a captain; he 
was described as struck in the face by the bursting of a shell, 
and seriously wounded. Walt left instantly. He would 
nurse his brother and send back news to his anxious family. 
After three days of suffering and fatigue, having been sent 
in the confusion of camps and hospitals from one to another, 
he reached his brother George at Rappahannock. 

He found himself suddenly thrown amidst the cruel reali- 
ties of the aftermath of a battle, face to face with the 
wounded, the dying, the dead. One of the first sights he met 
in camp was a heap of amputated feet, legs, arms, hands, at 
the foot of a tree within ten yards of the house, a full load 
for a one-horse cart. 1 He had gluttonously fed of life till 
then, and he now was satiated not with death alone, but with 
the unbearable horrors attending a battle-field. The cap- 
tain's wound was not serious; he already was recovering, and 
Walt was free to visit the camp, especially the field hospital, 
where the wounded, without care, were heaped in disorder, 
still clad in their blood-stained uniforms. He went among 



l Complefe Prose, p. 20. 



174 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

these sufferers and spoke to them. He was without means 
and bitterly realized his helplessness. 

He wrote letters under their dictation to parents; he went 
among the hospital tents of the army of the Potomac — the 
miserable tents where lay thousands of wounded, and some 
dying. He familiarized himself with the sights of the field. 
He looked, studied, identified himself with all. In his 
brother's regiment he discovered Brooklyn friends. On 
December 28th he left Falmouth to convoy the wounded and 
ill, many of them his own townsmen, to Washington. He had 
no precise plan at the time. It is under the sole stress of 
events that he began the extraordinary task which was about 
to absorb him, body and soul, for the following years. Now 
that he found himself among the great army of the mutilated 
and feverish who were filling the capital, an imperious force 
held him. He had touched suffering, and was under its 
magnetic attraction. He was wholly fascinated. 

Walt followed his instinct faithfully. And his instinct 
bade him attach himself to these panting, bleeding men who 
had need of a hand to dress their wounds, to remain near 
these poor, tortured hearts, suffering for the look or the word 
which would inspire them with courage. This time the call 
was heeded. 

And it is then that naturally, without being tied to any 
program by the sole strength of the bond which united him 
to his wounded, he undertook little by little the role which he 
was to fill during the war, that of "volunteer nurse." He 
was far from suspecting, that moment, that the 16th of 
December, 1862, he had quitted Brooklyn never to return 
again except as a visitor. 

It is in January, 1863, that he commenced his daily visits 
to the sick and wounded in that vast lazar-house which 
Washington then was, encircled by improvised villages, 
where sometimes fifty, sixty, seventy thousand sufferers 
were cared for. In proportion as he came in contact with 
this crowd of the helpless, an experience little by little came 



AT THE BEDSIDE OF THE DYING 175 

to him. He realized his inability to lift himself to the gran- 
deur and extent of their suffering; he was not, however, as 
helpless as in the first days. His large instinct of humanity 
trained by the weeks passed at the bedside of the sick sug- 
gested to him now a hundred little devices — so great in re- 
sults — by which the anguish of the hospital and physical 
pain might be mitigated. He regulated his ministry by a 
method all his own. 

Thanks to his Notes of the War, his letters to his mother, 
and his articles to newspapers, we know what constituted 
his hospital service. It is strongly stamped with his person- 
ality and is marginally vouched for by the nurse, the sanitary 
inspector, as well as the ordinary charitable visitor. Walt 
in the hospitals was the unique, the great and good Walt, 
a real man who, among the stricken soldiers, found, in his 
ample heart at once manly and maternal, all the original 
ways of helping them. 

It was his custom to pass through one or many wards of 
a hospital, stop a moment before each bed, offer the patient 
a trifle, a biscuit, an orange, a sheet of writing paper, a 
stamped envelope, tobacco, a bit of money, or, if he had noth- 
ing more to offer, simply a smile, a word of friendship, a 
nod of the head, neglecting no one. He was sure to notice, 
among the rows of young men, those who needed particularly 
his care, the downcast, the prostrate, whom the feeling of 
their abandon and the dismal atmosphere of the hospital 
plunged into a black stupor. These needed comfort and 
solace more than medicine: their recovery depended upon 
it. One of his customary tasks was to sit at the bedside 
of the weak and sick, and write letters to their mothers, 
brothers, sisters, sweethearts, who for months were without 
news of their soldier. He also brought to them history 
texts, illustrated reviews and the daily papers which passed 
from hand to hand. He kept in a notebook the need, the 
wish, the pain of each one, the trifle which he was to bring 
in his next visit to arouse pleasure and consequently health. 



176 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

Nothing was petty or useless when it served to soothe some 
poor languishing fellow. He knew that the odour of lemon 
in the hand caused joy to a feverish patient. He knew a 
man's delight in tobacco, in hearing him read, recite a poem, 
or conduct a guessing game. The wounded Rebels and the 
blacks received from him the same attention as the Union 
soldiers. The man of crowds thus practised his invariable 
method, which was to keep in touch with individuals; but 
how much more at this tragic hour, at the bedside of the 
anguished and dying, in the distress and foulness of a hos- 
pital in war time! 

Whatever was the catholicity of his sympathy, Walt 
devoted much of his time to those whom he called his 
"special cases." In the hospitals the number of very young 
men, from sixteen to twenty, the greater number coming 
from the country, was considerable. It was to some of these 
boys, enfeebled by fever or wounds, weakened by homesick- 
ness, upon whom his patient tenderness was exercised and 
wrought miracles. Here is one, for instance, among so many 
others : 

June 18th. — In one of the hospitals I find Thomas Haley, Company M, 
4th, New York cavalry — a regular Irish boy, a fine specimen of youthful 
physical manliness — shot through the lungs — inevitably dying — came 
over to this country from Ireland to enlist — has not a single friend or 
acquaintance here — is sleeping soundly at this moment, (but it is the sleep 
of death) — has a bullet-hole straight through the lung. I saw Tom when 
first brought here, three days since, and didn't suppose he could live 
twelve hours — (yet he looks well enough in the face to a casual observer). 
He lies there a fine-built man, the tan not yet bleach'd from his cheeks and 
neck. Poor youth, so handsome, athletic, with profuse beautiful shining 
hair. One time as I sat looking at him while he lay asleep, he suddenly, with- 
out the least start, awaken'd, open'd his eyes, gave me a long steady look, 
turning his face very slightly to gaze easier — one long, clear, silent look — 
a slight sigh — then turned back and went into his doze again. Little he 
knew, poor death-stricken boy, the heart of the stranger that hover'd 



\ ^Complete Prose, p. SI. 



AT THE BEDSIDE OF THE DYING 177 

This silent and tender vigil at the bedside of the dying 
evokes the stanza in which the poet is pictured on the battle- 
field, a whole night, near the body of a combatant: 

Vigil strange I kept .on the field one night; 

When you my son and my comrade dropt at my side that day, 

One look I but gave which your dear eyes return' d with a look I shall 

never forget, 
One touch of your hand to mine O boy, reach'd up as you lay on the ground, 
Then onward I sped in the battle, the even-contested battle, 
Till late in the night reliev'd to the place at last again I made my way, 
Found you in death so cold dear comrade, found your body son of respond- 
ing kisses, (never again on earth responding,) 
Bared your face in the starlight, curious the scene, cool blew the moderate 

night-wind, 
Long there and then in vigil I stood, dimly around me the battle-field 

spreading, 
Vigil wondrous and vigil sweet there in the fragrant silent night, 
But not a tear fell, not even a long-drawn sigh, long, long I gazed, 
Then on the earth partially reclining sat by your side leaning my chin in 

my hands, 
Passing sweet hours, immortal and mystic hours with you dearest comrade 

— not a tear, not a word, 
Vigil of silence, love and death, vigil for you my son and my soldier. 1 

Most of the youths, lying for weeks in the hospital, 
were friendless, poor, far from home. The feeling of loneli- 
ness, together with the peculiar general misery permeating 
a hospital, profoundly depressed them. Surgeons, nurses 
particularly, did their duty, many with great devotion and 
even heroism. But the number of victims increased, the 
service was bound to become routine, indifferent, even cold. 
' 'Oh, I wish that you, or rather women having the same quali- 
ties as you and Mat" [his sister], he wrote to his mother — 
"were here in crowds to be placed as matrons before the 
unhappy soldiers sick and wounded. Your presence alone 
would be enough. Oh, what good that would do." And 
again: "Mothers full of maternal love, however mi trained 



^Leaves of Grass, p. 238. 



178 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

they might be, but carrying with them the memory of the 
home and the magnetic touch of hand, are the true nurses." 1 
And something in the character of Walt fitted him for this 
healing power; with his obtrusive masculinity he had for 
them a reserve of latent femininity and the tenderness of a 
good mother. He was himself like the good odour of home 
to young boys, eager for soothing love. None would have 
known as he did how to unlock closed hearts, how to make 
them open at the caress of his hand and his voice. He was 
the mother to the sick youth, as well as the comrade, with 
a world of tenderness for the young Americans stricken by 
sickness and wounds. 

It is during these years that he truly won this magnificent 
title, at the head of one of his poems (its aureole to remain 
forever about his name) — Wound Dresser — of wounds 
spiritual as well as physical. 

Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals, 

The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand, 

I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young, 

Some suffer so much, I recall the experience sweet and sad, 

(Many a soldier's loving arms about this neck have cross'd and rested, 

Many a soldier's kiss dwells on these bearded lips). 2 



l The Wound Dresser, p. 42. 
^Leaves of Grass, pp. 243-4. 



XIII 
THE WOUND 

In practising this priesthood of humanity Walt be- 
longed absolutely to no one. He was called "his own mis- 
sionary. " To work in complete independence apart from 
paid employes, simply to prove himself a man well dis- 
posed and affectionate among the sick men to whom he 
gave his overflowing strength was the whole secret of his 
mission. He was thus alone, left to the suggestion of his 
instinct and to his own resources. 

Since the first weeks of his arrival in Washington he had 
to organize a little his material life, to find some modest 
income for himself and his dear wounded. Toward the close 
of 1863 a friend came to visit him, in a poor bare little room, 
the cheapest he could find, in the third story of an old build- 
ing; it was literally a garret, containing scarcely any furni- 
ture but a bed, a deal table, and a little sheet-iron stove. 
"I found him preparing his luncheon . . . cutting 
bread with a pocket knife preparing to toast it; all his uten- 
sils were of the simplest." 1 

He was lucky in meeting, as soon as he reached the capital, 
a friend whose acquaintance he had made in Boston two 
years and a half before. And such a friend! The most 
generous heart, the noblest, the completest which fate could 
throw in his way. ... It was Douglas O'Connor, who 
left his city and his profession for a position in the Lighthouse 
Bureau. He and his wife welcomed Walt as one of their own 
children — though old, he was always a big child; and for six 
months he not only had his place at their table, but he had 
all the little attentions which his mother and his sister were 

J J. T. Trowbridge: Reminiscences of Wait Whitman, Atlantic Monthly, November 2, 1902, p. 16S. 

179 



180 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

wont to give him in Brooklyn. Walt found in the O'Connor 
home hearts of his own calibre; never did he leave the house 
without a promise to return; and he was soon to find in 
O'Connor his most ardent champion. Major Hapgood pro- 
cured him work in the office of military paymaster. He 
kept accounts for a few hours every day, and received enough 
pay for his daily needs. Occasionally he sent to New York 
and Brooklyn newspapers hospital notes and was liberally 
paid for them. Long afterward, when he collected his Notes 
of the War, he utilized these letters some of which, very long, 
are living pictures, where the lamentable army of victims are 
seen in their misery and their multiple suffering. 1 

He did what he could himself, out of his scant means to 
supply his numerous little presents to the wounded; he had 
scruples about making outside appeal, even for such a pur- 
pose. For a long time he thought of giving lectures through- 
out the country to collect money needed for the sick. Once 
in February, 1863, he wrote to a faithful friend in Boston, 
James Redpath, that a little money would be a great help 
for his work, and his friend responded to the appeal. Mr. 
Redpath, with Walt's touching letter, sought the help of 
Emerson, who had rich and generous friends, and Emerson 
himself was wholeheartedly in favour of the work of his friend 
Whitman. Little by little good souls, men and women in- 
terested in his work, sent him subscriptions as well as con- 
fidence, relying on him entirely to distribute the money 
wisely to the soldiers. Then he could distribute oranges, 
cakes, cream, pieces of silver — this with great devotion. The 
desolating impotence of the first days was over. 2 

In October, 1863, he returned to Brooklyn for a month. 
John Hay, who was a*friend of O'Connor, procured him a 
pass. 3 Then he came back to his post a few days before he 



*Three of these articles have been reprinted by Bueke with the title The Wound Dresser, a collection 
of letters of Whitman to his mother during the war. 
^Complete Prose, p. 51. 
'Blisa Perry: Walt Whitman, pp. 141-142. 



THE WOUND 181 

received news of the death of his brother Andrew. His 
mother was very lonely but the hospitals were now part of 
his life. He would not quit the wards full of pale youths ex- 
cept to help in the landing of new boatloads of wounded, 
hurried from the battle-fields, or perhaps for a brief sojourn 
to the army among the tent-hospitals of the camp, where dis- 
tress was still more frightful. 

In a hospital at Armory Square, close to the wharf, where 
were crowded those unable to be carried farther — the worst 
cases — was his most arduous labour. Walt was himself 
astonished at his extraordinary self-possession so close to 
unnamable horrors. It was when outside the hospital in 
his room or out walking, that he thought of the bloody 
scenes; when he was near some poor devil whose flesh was 
eaten by corruption, he would feel a sudden convulsion pull 
at his heart and tremble from head to foot. 1 Or perhaps 
pierced by an emotion which brought him to tears, he would 
take from his pocket a notebook, pencil a few lines: the 
embryo of a future poem. 2 The astonishing quietude of his 
nature served him marvellously in these circumstances; he 
could control his emotion and assist with the exterior im- 
passiveness of a man of science at all the sights of the 
hospital. The smiling face, the sweet humour in the pres- 
ence of the sick concealed a soul in grief. He writes to his 
old mother : " How miserable appear all the petty pride and 
vanity of this world in the midst of scenes like this — these 
tragedies of soul and body. To see such things and not to 
be able to prevent them is terrible. I am almost ashamed to 
be so well and free from all sickness." In seeing so many 
innocent victims, thousands of men and boys formed for a 
splendid and fecund life mowed down, he experienced the 
colossal horror of the war, though he recognized proudly the 
need successfully to finish the struggle in which the destiny 
of the country was at stake. He himself would enlist un- 



1 The Wound Dresser, pp. 123-124. 
2 Bucke: Walt Whitman, p. 171. 



J^AN 



182 WALT WHITMAN— THE IVjEAN AND HIS WORK 

hesitatingly if his presence was more needed in the ranks 
than in the hospitals. 

With all his absorbing care of the sick, his increasingly 
awakened curiosity would not allow him to neglect a study 
of the aspects of Washington in war time, and all the details 
of the life of the soldier, on the march in camp, at rest, re- 
ceiving pay, or in the aftermath of battles. He looked not 
only at the slow, interminable procession through the streets 
of ambulances carrying the wounded to the hospitals, at the 
dreary squads of captured deserters, but when a regiment 
marching to the front halted in the street, he mingled with 
the men, listened, asked questions. The vigorous beauty 
of the native Americans, from field and factory, was to him 
a continual subject of wonder. Were they not the justifi- 
cation of that enthusiastic faith in America which he had 
expressed in his poems? His emotional and impulsive 
nature, sensitive to the electric thrill of the crowd, responded 
intensely to the starry banner, Yankee Doodle, the rhythmic 
tread of a regiment of cavalry, all the trumpets, drums, 
cymbals, the march of an armed regiment. He was seized 
with the same emotion as the man in the street. He had 
never experienced the like before. He was stirred most by 
the manoeuvring ground. The special reality of troops in 
the field, with tragic suggestion they roused after battle, in 
which sixty thousand men were left on the ground, gave to 
these frequent shows a terrible beauty which penetrated his 
very heart. 

With an attentive ear he listened to the reports of battles 
from the sick and convalescent who had fought in them; 
their story of the skirmishes, the action, the battle-field, 
details of which the daily papers, with their colourless and free 
summary, said nothing. Thus he penetrated these inner- 
most aspects of the reality of the war, learned history at its 
very sources, the history which never gets into books. One 
day he visited a camp of black troops and noticed how fine 
they looked. Some War Memoranda published later abound 



THE WOUND 183 

in impressionistic vignettes of the life of the soldier in the field 
— such as the astonishing picture of the wounded on a moon- 
light night — part of the battle of Chancellorsville. 1 He used 
to go to the Capitol during stormy sessions rejoicing in the 
sumptuous building and noting the mediocre orators. He 
loved to stride through the empty corridors or to see the sun 
set on the Genius of Liberty crowning the structure. But 
all of these were but crumbs of his life at that time; his work 
in the hospitals kept him by the power of fate. Early in 
1864, evoking the coming years, he saw no other prospect 
than to be consecrated to the sick and wounded so long as 
they needed him. 

The call was heard: he obeyed. 

It was the spring of the year 1864 that the terrible battles 
of the Desert and of Spottsylvania took place. The crowd 
of wounded brought into Washington was enormous. In 
May the appalling flood still kept growing. The greater 
part of the newcomers remained long in the army uncared for; 
their wounds, hastily dressed or not at all, were inflamed and 
putrid from exposure. Quick amputations were in progress. 
Many lost their minds. Since the war began the hospitals 
had not offered such a horrible sight. Walt redoubled his 
work in the effort to be equal to the superhuman task. The 
result was that at the end of May he fell ill. This time 
human endurance reached its limit, the worst was come. He 
braced himself to the task; he neither could nor would 
leave his wounded at this critical moment. But he soon had 
to yield and to remain for days from the hospitals sending 
someone else in his place. The good giant was wounded for 
the first time in his life and for life. 

He did not lack warning, but his faith in his own strength 
was boundless and his health was proof against everything. 
The summer preceding he suffered from dizziness, deafness, 
sore throat. Several times the doctor told him to refrain 
from this too-constant contact with the poisoned air of the 

Complete Prose, pp. 28-30. 



184 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

wards. He, however, so sure of his phenomenal health, paid 
no attention, entirely absorbed in his duty. 

Added to all this, in the height of the summer while assist- 
ing at an amputation of a gangrenous limb, he gashed his right 
hand; it happened with one of the "special cases" — a Rebel. 
The inflammation reached the arm, which began to swell. It 
healed rapidly and he gave little attention to the trifling 
accident which one day was to be of grave consequence. He 
wrote as usual to his mother of his perfect health, his weight, 
his appearance. But at the beginning of June, 1864, as a 
result of his enormous labour in the crowded hospitals, and of 
the extreme heat, the symptoms of the preceding summer 
reappeared, but with quickened strength. "It is proba- 
ble," he wrote his mother, "that the poison of the hospital 
has affected my system and I see it is more than I supposed. 
Some days I believe I am better, and I feel revived, but, 
some hours after, I have a new attack." 1 He did not get 
better. 

He had too long absorbed the poison from wounds and 
at last the corruption reached him. More than malaria, 
the repeated shocks and anguish of these frightful years, 
the torture of his loving heart before the hecatombs, the 
perpetual effort to preserve his self-possession in the presence 
of the suffering and the dying, the enormous strength ex- 
pended in heartening the distressed boys ended in sapping 
his athletic constitution. He had suffered too much in seeing 
suffering; his was moral illness as well as physical. And 
after having lifted so many of the prostrate, he himself was 
prostrated. 

The doctors ordered an immediate change of air and in 
July he left for Brooklyn, where he intended to remain the 
weeks needed to recuperate. He had to remain six months. 
He had been heroic and loving; now he was exposed to peril; 
his physical perfection was at stake — one day or another, 
if not to-day, surely later — the heavy ransom of the lives 

*The Wound Dresser, p. 197. 



THE WOUND 185 

he saved — he, so proud of his vigour arid his untouched vital- 
ity, he who knew no illness, and who by these terrible years, 
at the age of forty-six, at the very climax of his power, was 
transformed at one stroke into an old man. A respite in 
Brooklyn and New York gave him new aplomb and he re- 
turned to Washington. Nevertheless, something remained, 
some unknown fatal germ which, slyly hiding, would one day 
smite him. The war marked him, also, as one of its victims. 



XIV 

THE COMRADE HEART 

To any one dying, thither I speed and twist the knob of the door, 
Turn the bed-clothes toward the foot of the bed, 
Let the physician and the priest go home. 

I seize the descending man and raise him with resistless will, 

despairer, here is my neck, 

By God, you shall not go down ! hang your whole weight upon me. 

1 dilate you with tremendous breath, I buoy you up, 
Every room of the house do I fill with an arm'd force, 
Lovers of me, bafflers of graves. 1 

Had he not justified, in the course of these years, this 
proud affirmation of his poem? By the power of his tender- 
ness and his personal magnetism he many a time had saved 
lives pledged to the grave. He had offered his neck to the 
weak, and spent his resistless will like the Walt Whitman 
who sang himself in Leaves of Grass. He had accomplished 
work forbidden to the doctor and the priest. 

This mission of Walt in the hospital represents the time 
when "the mysterious bodily quality," 2 which always won 
him the silent homage of glances in the street and untold 
sympathy, reached its highest power. It was then that his 
magnetism radiated with an intensity commensurate with 
the suffering everywhere visible. It would be difficult to 
suggest the effect of the presence of the man on the wounded 
if eye-witnesses had not pictured it for us: we know that 
his very presence was powerful enough to change the at- 

*Leaves of Grass, p. 66. 

2 John Burroughs: Notes, pp. 13-14. 

186 



THE COMRADE HEART 187 

mosphere of an entire ward. He was rich with the whole 
of humanity which he had already absorbed. His giant 
individuality operated as a tonic. He was more than a 
medicine to the prostrated boys. In some cases where 
science was impotent the doctors would say: "Turn him 
over to Whitman. Perhaps he will save him." * 

Walt never boasted of the immense service he rendered. 
Yet his labour, when it is considered, staggers the imagina- 
tion. He estimated that he individually visited from eighty 
to a hundred thousand wounded and ill; as for the number 
of lives saved, that remains the secret of love. Close friends 
who every day saw him pass or went with him alone 
knew the truth aside from the attendants of the hospitals. 
O'Connor recalls a picture of him unforgettably beautiful 
when on a midnight visit to his home. He came to ask for 
supper, his coat on his arm, his cuffs turned up, shod in 
great regiment slippers, very straight and tall, appearance 
rude and majestic; he was returning from a convoy of 
wounded. O'Connor later, in flaming words, charged Amer- 
ica to remember what this simple man, without other reason 
than his heart, had done for her sons. 2 And Bucke inscribed 
this homage in his book: "Those who joined the ranks and 
fought the battles of the Republic did well; but when the 
world knows, as it begins to-day to know it, of the way this 
man — with no encouragement, without the least obligation, 
with simplicity, without drum-beating nor any approving 
voices — went into these immense lazar-houses, and conse- 
crated his days and nights, his heart and his soul, and finally 
his health and his life to the sick and wounded sons of Amer- 
ica, it will say that he did better." 3 

Great was the spiritual effort of the Wound Dresser in this 
persistent task. Great also was the moral effect which these 
years produced in him. He left the hospitals with the deep 



l Camden Edition, Introduction, p. ki. 

m. O'Connor: The Good Gray Poet in Bucke's Walt Whitman, pp. 123-128. 

3 The Wound Dresser, pp. 199-200. 



188 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

conviction of having lived sacred moments which no word 
was able to convey; this is why he loved to keep silent about 
his experience. "Those three years I consider the greatest 
privilege and satisfaction (with all their feverish excitement 
and physical deprivations and lamentable sights), and, of 
course, the most profound lesson of my life. ... It 
aroused and brought out and decided undreamed-of depth 
of emotion in me." 1 The emotion was so intense and pro- 
longed it broke him at last. 

This mission always remained to him of a character quasi- 
religious, so much was it a fervour. He was bound to the 
victims of the war by an unspeakable union. His great 
mother-like heart bled for the sons of his race, sacrificed 
in full force, for all the robust boys, from field and shop, 
"intelligent, independent, tender in feeling, accustomed to a 
life free and healthful." He believed that men never loved 
one another as he and some of the poor wounded boys, dying 
and loving one another. In his confession to his mother and 
to his friend, Mrs. Price, he speaks of the profound tender- 
ness of the young soldiers, how marvellously they respond to 
affection. 2 Many a time the holy mystery of suffering and 
love was for him so rich that he could well say that he re- 
ceived more than he gave in that exchange of tenderness. 
One of the few times he broke silence on this subject, so 
intimate and moving, was in the presence of his friend 
Sidney Morse, the sculptor who made a bust of the poet 
toward the close of his life. He said : 

The most precious time of my life, my love for my mother and my love 
for those dear boys, Secessionists and Unionists. ... It seemed to me, 
during all this time, that I was not far away caring for strangers but 
absolutely at home with my own flesh and blood. ... I do not know 
why I speak of this but I want to show you the little note books with 
blood spots. . . . 3 



Complete Prose, p. 72. 

'Both letters are in The Wound Dresser, pp. 128-129. 

*Bucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 391. 



THE COMRADE HEART 189 

Oh, the little notebooks made of leaves folded and fastened 
with a pin, the dozen little notebooks, yellow, blotched with 
blood, filled with notes at the bedside of patients, watching 
the dead, or at the clinic, the notebooks where the comrade 
wrote the name, cases, wants of the invalid, accounts from 
the field of battle from the mouth of the wounded, and which 
he tenderly kept — for himself alone, full as they were of 
memories impossible to be "said or sung." 1 They were like 
a tabernacle where a thousand sorrows were kept, a thou- 
sand tearing emotions, a thousand untranslatable secrets. 
A depth of human tenderness dwells in their pages. 

Beyond this tragic and soothing experience, which stirred 
the depths of his being, unique lessons from the war came 
to Walt Whitman. Not only new songs jetted from him 
by this taking up arms for the great cause of the Union, 
but hi all his later poetry, enriched by impressions and emo- 
tions, the reflection of the war was extended, of a war en- 
larged to the confines of the world and deepened by a spirit- 
ual meaning. He went so far as to say that, without the 
capital event of the years 1861-1865 and his hospital life, 
Leaves of Grass would not have existed. Although three 
editions appeared before the war, this apparent paradox 
is true. The poet meant to say that without the war his 
book would have remained unfinished and that it came, in 
unexpected and compulsory collaboration, to perfect the 
work begun, and to give it its plenary signification. One 
of the great results of the struggle is that it allowed him to 
confront his country and his race, to acquire the definitive 
consciousness of all the reality and the grandeur of the 
States, united by a stronger than the federal bond. "I 
never knew what young Americans were," he wrote, "till 
I had been in the hospitals." 2 

More than any other he was able to appreciate in the 
hospitals where "the marrow of the tragedy concentrated" 3 

^Complete Prose, p. 1. 

*The Wound Dresser, p. 116. 

s Comj>}cIe Prose, p. 74. 



190 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

the courage of the fighters, the native strength of the 
race, the character of the men. He was close to those from 
all the regions of the vast continent, from New England, 
from Virginia, from New York, and Pennsylvania and from 
the West, the volunteersfromthe centre and the Great Lakes. 
He communicated with his country entire represented by 
thousands of fallen youth. And the feeling of the unity 
of his land through the multiplicity of its types and ter- 
ritories seized him as if he had been transported to the top 
of a mountain from whence his look could encompass total 
America. "It may have been odd," he remarked when he 
saw troops filing by him at night, "but I never before so 
realized the majesty and reality of the American people 
en masse. It fell upon me like a great awe." 1 A great light 
came to him, he discovered "authentic America" as he 
loved to repeat. His aboriginal faith issued from this 
period of blood and of horror, tempered, justified, tenfold 
enlarged. 

And the supreme lesson of this contact with America one 
and undivided was that he could verify the concrete reality 
of one of his ideas, perhaps the dearest of all his ideas, the one 
at all events which radiates with the most brilliancy about 
his work and his personality. Walt at the same time that 
he made proof of America made proof of comradeship. 
Rather, comradeship was the key to his gospel, such as he 
understood it; by the light of his communal instinct and 
such as certain periods of his life illustrate, it established it- 
self as something immense and new, the highest and most 
essential of human emotions. In every soul he perceived the 
germ of deep and tender feeling which awakens at the con- 
tact of another soul, and this natural attraction, at once 
physical and moral, which draws man to man is according to 
him, at the base even of social solidarity, more real than bonds 
formed by interest and rewards. And the frontiers of a 
nation do not stop the flight of this pure manly emotion of 

Complete Prose, p. 43. 



THE COMRADE HEART 191 

friendship, which after having penetrated the whole con- 
tinent projects through the whole world its millions of 
threads, invisible, woven inextricable. Comradeship is the 
woof of a world democracy as well as American democracy. 
Walt knew this better than any one, this sentiment exquisite 
and strong. It entered into his life, surrounded by com- 
panions, and the most natural symbol of him is his arm about 
the neck of a friend. It was there in the hospitals, according 
to the happy expression of Triggs, that "he perceived the 
new chivalry arising, the chivalry of comradeship. He saw 
that love lay latent in all hearts, and that a practical com- 
radeship already existed among men." 1 

An immense peace filled Walt now that he saw the triumph 
of his Idea. His great dream of Democrat and modern 
Apostle was not vain, since reality took pains to confirm it. 
He was right, and his book, which was himself, was also 
right; and that book would perhaps be right one day before 
the world as it was right for him. 

He had also other lessons from the experiences of this 
short and sublime period. A daily witness of physical pain 
and agony, he passed in every sense the limits of life and 
death. If he had studied before the source and secret of 
life, he had now heaped observations on the mystery of 
death. He derived a great lesson, one he verified a thousand 
thousand times: death, in reality, is not surrounded by the 
terror which our imagination, filled with fantasies, conjures 
when we are close to it. And Walt would never forget it, 
as the second part of Leaves of Grass proves where he sings 
the divine peace of death without terror, death the other 
form of life, and sings with the serene certitude and even joy 
of a soul who knew it for a good neighbour and was untor- 
mented by the enigma of the beyond. 

If the poet — without knowing it — carried within him a 
poison germ from all the wounded his fervent comrade soul 



1 0. L. Triggs: Selections, Introduction, p. xxxiii. 



192 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

impelled him to bend over, he also went from the hospitals — 
and of that he was clearly conscious — with the blessed mem- 
ory of these years of tenderness and of sorrow, as fruitful for 
him, the individual, as for the nation itself, renewed in its 
depths. 



XV 
HYMNS OF THE WAR AND OF LINCOLN 

In January, 1865, he again filled his post in Washington; 
his mission was not to be abandoned. The hospitals with 
their fascinating reality remained; and as long as they 
sheltered the sick of body and soul, Walt continued his 
visits. He gained, in his good Brooklyn, a new supply of 
vigour and felt himself strong as before. However, it was no 
longer "the same unconscious and perfect health," which had 
abounded in him up to this time; and he confessed that it 
was his first appearance in the character of a man not 
entirely well, but that would go over in due time. 1 

His material condition, on the other hand, was changed. 
His career was shaping itself to a new sudden turning, per- 
haps the most unexpected: Walt, the dreamer, Walt, the 
incorrigible "amateur," the follower of his own instinct, 
became a clerk in the service of the Government. He lacked 
then a few years of fifty, and the close care of the wounded 
had for a moment lulled his old passion for roving and change; 
more than that he had a fair income, and he saw, in a fixed 
monthly wage, the opportunity for more regular and more 
generous distribution in the hospitals. Thus it was with 
pleasure that some months after his return to Washington 
he received work in the Department of the Interior, in the 
Bureau of Indian Affairs. 

Some friends, interested in his mission, found employment 
for the Wound Dresser. Before obtaining it, one of them, 
J. T. Trowbridge, had failed in an attempt in March, 1863, 
with the Secretary of the Treasury, S. P. Chase. Although 



iBliss Perry: Walt Whitman, pp. 152-153. 

193 



194 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

he had presented in favour of his protege, a letter of recom- 
mendation from Emerson, Chase would not admit the author 
of Leaves of Grass as one of his assistants. 1 The Secretary of 
the Interior this time did not have the same scruples as his 
colleague of the Treasury; perhaps he was ignorant of the 
poetic personality of his employe. But no matter, Walt 
was provided for. He received honourable pay for work but 
little absorbing. Never had he earned so much money — 
except perhaps at the time when his building enterprise put 
him for a moment on the road to fortune, which he was care- 
ful to put from him with prudent haste. 

This money allowed liberality without changing any- 
thing in his manner of living. He remained at his desk 
during the day and devoted his Sundays and sometimes his 
evenings to the wounded. They remained his steady pre- 
occupation. The war was not finished; and even after the 
victory and the disbanding of the armies, there was ample 
work still in the hospitals. The final battles, March, April, 
before Richmond, were sanguinary ones and the last victims 
had to lie for months awaiting almost hopeless recovery. 
Walt did not forget these sufferers; they were still its victims. 
Every Sunday he loaded and shouldered his haversack and 
journeyed to these who needed the strength of him. All the 
year 1865 and a great part of 1866 he continued his Sunday 
visits. Burroughs who sometimes went with him writes: 
"Words are poor and feeble things in an affair of this 
kind. . . . His magnetism was unbelievable and inex- 
haustible. Dim eyes became bright at his approach. . . . 
A fortifying air filled the ward and neutralized its bad odours. 2 
One after another of the hospitals closed; soon there was but 
one, Harewood Hospital, secluded in a wood northeast of the 
city, last resort of the incurably wounded, those obstinately 
ill, and the unfortunate without house or home. Four or ^ve 
wards were still full of their sad occupants; and Walt kept on, 



»J. T. Trowbridge: Reminiscences of Walt Whitman. Atlantic Monthly, February, 1902, p. 163, 
8 John Burroughs: Notes, pp. 12-13. 



HYMNS OF THE WAR AND OF LINCOLN 195 

trying "if he could do something" for these veterans of sor- 
row. This was seen when years later, passing their immense 
army in review for the last time, he addressed to all the dead 
in the war the solemn adieu of one who ever kept their mem- 
ory sacred. 1 

At the very moment when the struggle was near its end, 
he was preparing to unveil the monument more enduring 
still, which he had built in secret for them. During the 
years of feverish commotion all poetry apparently disap- 
peared in the gulf that yawned at the nation's feet : but from 
this very gulf it had arisen, and in the soul of the Wound 
Dresser, steeped in profound emotions, new poems burst 
forth. His book was not swallowed up in the storm; it had 
silently grown a story. 

In the first days of the war the shock which he suffered on 
seeing his city and America take arms was translated into 
flaming odes which seemed penetrated with the holy fire of 
the Prophets. Under the daily inspiration of the enrollment 
en masse, of telegrams read aloud of the passing of troops 
through the streets of New York, he wrote the larger part of 
his Drum Taps. He left the manuscript at home when he 
went to care for his brother George. Bye and bye, his per- 
sonal experience in the hospitals and camp, the tragedies he 
had seen, the unspeakable emotion experienced among the 
wounded, gave birth to other poems in feeling still more in- 
tense. The collection took shape toward the end of 1863. 
When he was spending a month in Brooklyn with his mother, 
in November of the same year, he wrote to his friend El- 
dridge: "I must be continually bringing out poems — now is 
the hey day — I shall range along the high plateau of my life 
and capacity for a few years now, and then swiftly descend." 2 
On his return to Washington, one day a friend came and 
found him in his garret; he took the manuscript from his 
trunk and read fragments of it with strength and feeling and 

1 The Million Dead, Too. Summed Up. Complete Prose, p. 72. 
*Bliss Perry: Walt Whitman, p. 143. 



196 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

with a voice of ricli but not resounding tone. 1 He revised 
the poems the following year and put the finishing touch to 
them during the six months' enforced vacation in Brooklyn. 
Now the volume was ready and he intended to "move Heaven 
and earth" to have it appear. 2 It was the old, old difficulty. 
The Boston publishers, when pressed, refused to be respons- 
ible for Drum Taps. Now that Walt had employment and 
a salary, he could resort to his favourite method. He was his 
own publisher, as he had been and would be. For years he 
had worked as a printer, he thoroughly knew the business, 
and he kept in touch with the pressmen of New York. It 
was there he gave his manuscript to be printed early in 
1865. 

The book was ready at the beginning of April. The poet 
happened to be in Brooklyn, came perhaps to revise the last 
proofs, when a fresh thunderbolt shook the country: Abra- 
ham Lincoln was assassinated! In the existing circum- 
stances, after the surrender of Lee, the war scarcely over, 
such an event could but stupify and crush the whole nation 
prostrate before him in whom was incarnated the cause of 
the Union in the period of suffering, the greatest citizen and 
the greatest president. Walt was struck to the heart. " We 
heard the news very early in the morning," he wrote in 
Specimen Days, "Mother was getting breakfast, and the 
other meals later, as usual; but the whole day not one of us 
ate a single mouthful. We each drank a half cup of coffee; 
that was all. We spoke little. We bought all the morning 
and evening papers and then a number of special editions, 
and we passed them silently one to another. 3 

Lincoln had more than Whitman's deep love. He had 
studied him at close range, and the one-time raftsman from 
the West who, with a firm and prudent hand, had guided the 
Union during the tempestuous years, was in his eyes the 



ij. T. Trowbridge: Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, Atlantic Monthly, February, 1902, p. 163. 
•Bliss Perry: Walt Whitman, p. 149. 
9 Complete Prose, p. 20. 



HYMNS OF THE WAR AND OF LINCOLN 197 

highest type of democracy. He was a man and a type after 
his own heart who justified his faith and his philosophy. The 
first time that he saw him was in Brooklyn, in February, 
1861, the day when the new president made that singular 
entrance into New York, the event Whitman describes with 
the hand of a master. From the top of an omnibus blocked 
by the crowd, Walt leisurely studied and noted "his look 
and gait — his perfect composure and coolness — his unusual 
and uncouth height, his dress of complete black, stove pipe 
hat pushed back on his head, his dark brown complexion, 
seamed and wrinkled yet canny-looking face, black curly 
head of hair, disproportionately long neck, and his hands 
held behind as he stood observing the people." 1 He saw Lin- 
coln again in Washington, where he became to him a familiar 
figure. In the streets he often met the President's carriage 
and in summer every evening, on his way to his lodging 
out of town, he passed by Walt's home. Sometimes Walt 
mingled with the enormous and picturesque crowd which on 
reception days besieged the White House. And he did not 
fail to see the canny shrewdness of that face, even the plain- 
ness with the "deep latent sadness" 2 which the vast respon- 
sibilities of the times had imprinted there but where the 
"old goodness and tenderness" 3 remained. The face of Lin- 
coln exercised on the great reader of souls a powerful attrac- 
tion: beneath the deep-cut lines he saw a "subtle and indirect 
expression" 4 which no portrait could reproduce. That 
"something else" was surely the personality of this man, 
extraordinary and at the same time common ; and the poet of 
personality sought to decipher its puzzle. Later he became 
intimate with John Hay, the future Secretary of State, then 
private secretary to Lincoln . Walt knew in a confidential way 
some aspects of the real man. 



^Complete Prose, p. 303. 
*Id., p. 37. 
•Id., p. 57. 
«/<f., p. 38. 



198 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

The poet and the President because they frequently met 
came to bow and smile when they passed on the street. 
Perhaps there was something else in the greeting than the 
conventional courtesy on the President's part, and he mixed 
with it a certain sympathetic, almost conscious curiosity. 
Walt's imposing figure, which had become familiar to pas- 
sersby on Pennsylvania Avenue, may also have intrigued 
him. Once in the winter of 1864, the President was talking 
near the window of the White House to a member of Congress 
and his friend; he held a letter in his hand ready to read, and, 
while reflecting, turned his glance toward the window. At 
that moment Walt was coming toward the White House on 
Pennsylvania Avenue, with his slow and balanced step, his 
big felt hat on, hands in front pockets of his overcoat, his 
head high, radiating that Olympian simplicity which always 
attracted passersby; the President wished to know who he 
was, and when he was told, said nothing but he followed the 
man with his eye insistently until he was out of sight. Then 
as if speaking to himself, Abraham Lincoln, with a peculiar 
tone and strongly emphasizing his words, made this remark : 
"Well, he looks like a man." 1 In the difficulties of every 
kind which came upon the Union and in spite of the reproach 
of dilatoriness and inertia which the ignorant and saloon 
politicians did not spare the President, Walt respected and 
trusted him. The country, by the enthusiastic reelection of 
Lincoln in 1864, gave him ground for this trust. And it 
was this man who was stupidly murdered by a madman in 
the midst of the boundless joy which hailed the victory of 
the Union. . . . The memory of the hour of grief would 
never leave the heart of the poet, which bled with all, 
more than all. With the years, his fervent admiration for 
the "mighty Westerner" 2 came to be a kind of religion. In 
his old age, when April 14th returned with the perfume of 
the lilacs, he did not fail, on every occasion possible, to 

tfohn Burroughs: Notes, p. 122. 
^Complete Prose, p. 436. 



HYMNS OF THE WAR AND OF LINCOLN [ 199 

renew publicly his solemn commemoration of Abraham 
Lincoln. 

Before that death, Walt laid aside his nearly completed 
volume. There was a gap in his book now, the enormous 
gap of that freshly made grave. His Drum Taps would 
not be brought out thus: the sudden emotion with which 
fate had finished the war must be expressed anew. And 
little by little it grew into the being of Walt in rhythmic 
accents of sorrow. To the dead hero he would consecrate 
a hymn. It then happened that the collection, supplemented 
by the last poems composed under the direct impression of 
the murder of April 14th, did not appear till two or three 
months later, that is, about the middle of 1865. The little 
volume of a hundred pages with its appendix (Drum Taps 
bearing the imprint: "New York, 1865" and the Sequel to 
Drum Taps that of "Washington, 1865-66," the two series 
bound together) did not display below its title the parental 
support of any publishing firm. It entered all alone into the 
world, having no name except the author's as a guarantee. 
We do not know exactly what welcome it received, but 
there is every reason to suppose the sale was very small and 
that the volume passed unnoticed. Leaves of Grass had 
raised a certain commotion because of its vast, open, insolent 
novelty : there was no such reason this time why Drum Taps 
should rouse the attention of the public. 

It was nevertheless the same Walt who purposed that 
these new Songs should as the first ones issue from him in 
contact with reality. Just as before, at the Opera, listening 
to Alboni, or in the noise of Broadway, or the moan of the 
waves on the Long Island shore, his Leaves sprouted from 
him — it was viewing the proud pageants or the blood of the 
real war, not the imaginary, that he set the measures of his 
Taps. Perhaps if he had sung brilliant exploits of conquer- 
ing generals in a dithyrambic and pompous manner dear to 
poets of patriotism he would have met approval from those 
in whom mediocrity is awakened by mediocrity. But 



200 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

these were poems of war which of all the world Walt could 
conceive. How wonderful, how strange, how authoritative 
they came from the heart of the Wound Dresser alternately 
transported and tortured. It was like an inner, emotional 
mystic epic of the war, in the two chief aspects — the ex- 
traordinary national uprising of the beginning, the bound- 
less devotion to the cause of democracy — then the immense 
sacrifice of young lives which he who loved them so pathetic- 
ally, celebrated with strains of passionate sadness. The 
poet put all his immense, heart-broken tenderness in the 
"psalm of the dead" honouring friend and foe, sacrificial 
offering to the cause. And what gives an incomparable 
significance to this book inspired of honour and love is the 
vision of final reconciliation which rises above the com- 
batants. 

My enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead, 

I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin — I draw near, 

Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin. 1 

Then, mournful and splendid crown of these verses in- 
spired by the war are the hymns to the memory of Lincoln — 
those deathless chants : When Lilacs Last in the Door Yard 
Bloomed and Captain, My Captain which may be compared 
in power of emotion to Siegfried's funeral march in Nibelung- 
enlied and which are sufficient one day to make Whitman 
recognized as the poet who sings the American nation, the 
Homer and Pindar of the United States. In Drum Taps 
the death of Lincoln appeared as an event, one with the war. 
The drama by this reached its epilogue in an emotion of con- 
secrated terror and of superb fate. The poet incarnated, 
in unforgettable poetry, the sorrow of a people; he was the 
heart of America in tears, gathered at the grave of her great 
son. 

Such was the poetical fruit which the war ripened in Walt 
Whitman. Later, when he reissues these poems, he can 



^Leaves of Grass, p. 251. This poem was translated into Provencal by Charles Bonaparte Wyse. Tr. 



HYMNS OF THE WAR AND OF LINCOLN 201 

annex them, then integrate them with his Leaves; they will 
make a new unit in the completion of the whole. The world 
may indeed disdain them; it is none the less true that he 
immortalized the purest and most intimate emotion of the 
Civil War and of all war. 



XVI 
O'CONNOR'S LASH 

While he was composing the glorious funeral hymn of 
Lincoln, Walt filled his place daily at his desk in the Depart- 
ment of the Interior. He rigidly performed his new duties 
and was even promoted in the department. For six 
months he had devoted the leisure of a calmer life to the 
wounded remaining in the hospitals, when the portfolio of 
the Interior passed into the hands of honourable James 
Harlan of Iowa. Lincoln had appointed him much against 
his will but finally yielded because of Harlan's Methodist 
support, a sect which had loyally supported the Government 
during the war. Harlan himself had been a Methodist 
clergyman, then lawyer, senator, and president of a college. 1 

One day a notice from Boston revealed to the new min- 
ister that one of his subordinates — the punctual and pacific 
employe with the white beard in the Bureau of Indian 
Affairs — was the author of a much-disputed book. Harlan 
to investigate the case betook himself one evening to Walt's 
desk and searched it, and, discovering a book covered with an- 
notations in ink and coloured pencil which to him was suspi- 
cious, carried it away to examine it. 2 It was a copy of Leaves 
of Grass which Walt in his leisure moments was revising 
in view of a new edition. In the privacy of his office Harlan 
searched out the cause of the denunciations: the case was 
judged without the preliminary of a hearing. The morning 
after, the book was cleverly replaced in Walt's desk and he 
immediately notified that the department no longer needed 



l Complete Prose, pp. 445-446. 

«H. Traubel: With Walt Whitman in Camden, pp. 470-476. 

- 202 



O'CONNOR'S LASH 203 

his services. The Wound Dresser was shown the door with- 
out explanation. 

The blow was sudden. Walt, astonished for a moment, 
received it with his customary philosophy. His stupefied 
and indignant friends protested. J. Hubley Ashton, who 
had a position with the Attorney General, went the following 
day to the Secretary of the Interior and demanded an ex- 
planation. O'Connor besought him to do this. Did Mr. 
Whitman neglect his duties or was he unable to fill them? 
No, he was a good employe, by the acknowledgment of 
the Secretary. The only reason for his dismissal was that he 
had written a book which he had discovered "by chance" 
in the department. Ashton, uselessly of course, tried to 
explain to the honourable inquisitor what Leaves of Grass 
was, its fundamental idea, etc. Harlan shook his head. 
And Ashton insisted. He knew Whitman thoroughly and 
he could testify what his life had been; he told of his splendid 
work in the hospitals, his immense service to the victims 
of the war. The Secretary listened without flinching. 
The friend pursued his plea; the worthy Secretary interrupted 
him; he would not keep in his department the author of 
Leaves of Grass not even if the President himself ordered it. 
He would rather abandon his portfolio than recall his decision. 
There was nothing more to do and Ashton bowed himself 
out. 1 

His friend did not stop there. Walt left the Department 
of the Interior on June 30th, and in July he received from the 
Attorney General, James Speed, employment equivalent to 
that which he left. It was the first rap for Harlan. In this 
miserable little conspiracy against Whitman, the real victim 
as we shall see was none other finally than the executer 
himself. It was the first of three public attacks to which 
the poet had to submit. If ever an adequate revenge was 
drawn from an insult, it was the one being now prepared. 
He who was most indignant at the ignorant and odious 

»Bucke: Walt Whitman, pp. 41-42. 



204 , WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

hypocrisy of the Secretary of the Interior was the generous 
friend, the noble and impetuous O'Connor, at whose home 
Walt passed the first months of his Washington life. Not 
only did he influence Hubley Ashton to intercede for the 
poet but he interpreted Harlan's procedure as a crime against 
the liberty of literature. This crime he would avenge. 
And in the flame of his wrath, the writer in him was roused. 
Two months after discharge appeared a pamphlet entitled 
The Good Gray Poet: A Defense. It was a name suited to 
his appearance which people on the streets of Washington 
probably had given him, on seeing him pass by. 

O'Connor wonderfully directed his sling, and the honour- 
able Harlan was to be marked forever. It is difficult to 
analyze the scintillating pages of this philippic: in verbal 
power, sinew, movement, flash of image, satiric verve, it is 
allied to the most colourful and the most eloquent pieces 
of French prose, from Courier to Hugo. It translates not 
only the limitless enthusiasm and the burning sincerity of 
an admirer, but the sure taste of an artist, absolute master 
of language. O'Connor proved in it, in choosing examples 
in literature of all ages and all races, with unusual erudition, 
that the great work of the past — the great Hindoo poems 
as well as Moses and Ezekiel, Shakespeare as well as Dante, 
Rabelais as well as Cervantes — contained some of what the 
Harlans objected to — a part without which they would not 
be complete. O'Connor thus made in the New World the 
eternal plea for the indefeasible law of literature. Then, 
widening the controversy, he pleaded the whole cause of the 
poet, disposed of all the blots laid upon him from the begin- 
ning and reduced them to nothing. To the royally human 
character of his friend he offered a brilliant public tribute in 
laying bare his character, in recounting his mission in the 
hospitals, in making known the big meaning of his work. 
O'Connor did not mince his words. He spoke imperative 
challenging terms, showing what sovereign spirit of purity 
had dictated the poem which had roused the anger of all the 



O'CONNOR'S LASH 205 

Harlans. He flayed with a ferocious irony the disease of 
shame which corrupted rather than corrected morals. And 
the man and his work, thus exalted, justified, projected into 
full light, were put in the rank of absolute genius. He was 
not far from demanding for him, as compensation for the 
stupidity and outrage, the prytaneum as an honour to this 
other Socrates. ". . . The man who realized the sublime 
thing, an authentic book; who wrote to make his country 
greater, her citizens better, her race nobler; who has thrown 
into living verse a philosophy designed to exalt life to a 
higher level of sincerity, reality, religion." 1 

O'Connor, with all the eloquence, the audacity, and bril- 
liant mind of the Celt inflicted upon Harlan the most appro- 
priate chastisement. He conferred upon him the immortal- 
ity of ridicule: the name of Harlan was now saved from 
oblivion. The good friend went to battle like a crusader. 
It was not the first time that the vehemence of his conviction 
and the ardour of his intransigeance made him the champion 
of an unpopular cause; as journalist in Boston, he was dis- 
charged for having sustained without restriction the anti- 
slavery cause. And, in defending Walt, he was not stopped 
for a moment by the thought that this conflict with the 
Secretary of the Interior might cause him serious trouble, 
being himself an employe of the Government. Not only he 
accomplished a magnificent task, but he left a work, beyond 
the occasion which called it forth, and which has a place in 
American literature, where it is, of its kind, without a parallel. 

In completing his pages, O'Connor called the republic 
of letters to the defense of one of its insulted representatives. 
He was not content with this collective appeal, but sent his 
pamphlet to a number of men of letters in America and 
England, asking them by letter to rally to the cause of the 
poet. 2 The panegyric itself obtained slow recognition among 
the philistines; but, as an act of courage and justice is never 

iW. D. O'Connor, The Good Gray Poet, id Bucke: Walt Whitman, pp. 124-125. 

"Bliss Perry: Walt Whitman, p. 171. 



206 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

lost, the plea had some effect on opinion, and in certain circles 
created a current in favour of the poet. Some writers who 
moderately admired Leaves of Grass were forced to admit 
that Harlan's act was ignominious and many people not 
interested in literature did not conceal their disapproval. 
O'Connor did not perform in vain his gallant exploit. 
Scornful of insults, he took up again a subject which he had 
taken to heart, in publishing the story in which the great 
figure of his friend appears encircled by the aureole of legend, 
like some pilgrim of eternity 1 — and which helps to interpret 
later the engraving of Herbert Gilchrist, an admirable por- 
trait in which one does not forget, after having once studied 
it, the look bathed in tenderness and its unspeakable ex- 
pression. 2 And eighteen years later, in a long open letter 
to Bucke he fought the old fight for his friend of former days, 
with the same freshness of enthusiasm. 3 Always the noble 
O'Connor was at Walt's side, through all time the figure of 
loyalty, ardent faith, and unreserved admiration. This 
philippic, whose words still vibrate as when first written, 
marked a famous date in the history of Leaves of Grass. It 
was the first lance broken in public in honour of Walt. 
Among the sanctions which he received up to that time 
none justified him so amply. This time a magnificent, 
clarion-like, haughty voice was lifted in his defense, an 
avenger armed with compelling words against long-enduring 
calumny. Since Emerson's letter, ten years before, noth- 
ing as comforting was offered him on his way. "Thrice 
blessed be his memory" Walt piously pronounced at the 
grave of O'Connor, remembering what he had been to him 
in the lonely, desolate days of his beginning. 4 

»W. D. O'Connor, The Carpenter, Putnam, N. Y., January, 1865. 

*Bucke: Walt Whitman (frontispiece). 

•Id.: pp. 73-79. 

*Complete Prose, p. 513. Tr. 



PART FIVE 
THE GOOD GRAY POET 
WASHINGTON (1865-1873) 



XVII 

THE GREAT COMPANIONS; PETER DOYLE, THE 
CONDUCTOR 

The little tempest was over; Walt was now approaching 
a serene period of life. At his new post in the Department 
of Justice, the Good Gray Poet remained seven or eight 
happy years; he is left to the joyous absorption of life and of 
things as before in New York, but with the fulness of his 
fiftieth year approaching. No outward event marks these 
equable quiet years, following the enormous expense of 
strength which his work in the war had demanded, unless it 
was the slow but decisive forward advance of his book. 
Fate allowed him this interval that he might plentifully 
enjoy the life he adored before the dread shattering of his 
health. 

When he accepted his post, Walt did not give up his 
independence. He interpreted his duties as department 
employe somewhat as before he had his trade as a printer. 
Some hours of work at a desk left him free to be him- 
self. Walt fell in admirably with his new life and even 
felt its charm. From a large office window of the depart- 
ment he enjoyed a fine landscape; he never tired of the view 
which stretched eight or ten miles toward the south, of the 
panorama of the river, the surrounding heights, the green 
of the gardens. He had great freedom in his work: he was 
on friendly terms with his chief, the Attorney General, and 
the Assistant Attorney Hubley Ashton was a comrade. 
With his colleagues, too, his relations were pleasant. Walt 
in his way appreciated the comfort of his office; he who was 
used to garrets and the bareness of his own home often 
came in his free hours happy as a boy to find a good easy- 

209 



210 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

chair, a fire, and a good light. On winter evenings especially 
he liked to come there to pass many hours in reading books 
in the office library. 

The poet thus lived a relaxed, less crowded, less exuberant 
phase of his many-sided life. There was no fear, however, 
that he was static: in spite of his regular and prudent habits 
he remained always the impenitent Bohemian whom his 
friends knew to the last hour. Walt was too great not to 
remain himself, Walt the clerk the same as Walt the car- 
penter, or the printer. He remained the great lover of 
pavements that he was in New York, and on the avenues of 
Washington the passersby knew well his rolling and non- 
chalant gait and his big hat. Never were the ampleness 
of his figure, his massiveness, and his manner more attrac- 
tive. His florid face seamed by life, his flowing hair and 
fleecy beard; the man near fifty was stamped with a new 
majesty which we see in his portraits. 1 The unobtrusive 
authority of his least gesture, his natural dignity of manner, 
the "simple power," the easy assurance of his step, sug- 
gested the idea of a Commencer of an Adamic, as Burroughs 
says. Morning and evening it was easy to distinguish him, 
on Pennsylvania Avenue or in the Capitol, head high, throat 
bare, hands often in the front pockets of his coat, casting 
his absorbing glance at the crowd, stopping, listening, chat- 
ting a bit with policemen, pedlars, porters, drivers, slipping 
an alms into the hand of a cripple or smiling at a child. 
Walt travelled his kingdom and counted its marvels every 
day. 

Walt knew at this time elect companions, whose strong 
and generous friendship contributed much to the happiness 
of these years. Without them, now that his fascinating 
hospital mission was done, these years would have been 
monotonous: Washington, a nest of office-holders and func- 
tionaries, was not at all like New York, and was more or less 
an exile for Whitman, deprived of the pageant, the odour, 

*H. B. Binns: Life of Walt Whitman, p. 227. 



GREAT COMPANIONS 211 

the contact of the sea near which he was born and reared. 
They were three government employes, like himself: 
O'Connor, whom we know; Charles W. Eldridge, former 
publisher of Leaves of Grass, with whom side by side Walt 
had worked during the war in the Treasurer's office; and 
John Burroughs, who was employed in Finance. Burroughs 
who came to have a considerable share in Whitman's life, 
before becoming himself a famous writer, was a farmer's 
son whose preoccupations drew him early toward literature. 
He was strongly influenced by Emerson, and published, very 
young, in a Boston review an unsigned essay which was easily 
attributed to the master: later he had been a school teacher 
and a journalist. When the war was in full swing, he came 
to Washington, without a definite aim, thinking perhaps to 
enlist: and a little later he entered the Finance office. 
Leaves of Grass, which he read by chance, a little after the 
edition of 1860, produced upon him an extraordinary im- 
pression, such as he received from no other book. From 
that time on, the young man never failed, every Sunday, to 
carry with himj in his solitary walks the strange volume. 
He was compelled to penetrate its full meaning, which grew 
vaster with every fresh reading. One of his first thoughts, 
on arriving at Washington, was to seek the acquaintance 
of the poet. And from the day when he met him making 
his way through the wood to one of the hospitals, his haver- 
sack on his shoulder, they became intimate companions. 1 

There were also Hubley Ashton, Trowbridge, E. C. 
Stedman: these were congenial spirits. The hospitable 
O'Connor house was the usual meeting place of the group. 
Walt, when he was not going to the hospitals (which he 
visited till the spring of 1867 and where, the Christmas of 
1866, he gave a fine dinner to the last of the wounded sol- 
diers), 2 often came there to pass Sunday afternoon, after he 



iJohn Burroughs: Notes, pp. 9-13. 
Wamdtn Edition, \IU, p. 193. 



212 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

had breakfasted with the Burroughs family, 1 where he reg- 
ularly arrived late. These choice spirits discussed among 
themselves political events, the books, the personalities of 
the day, and sometimes hot discussions arose. O'Connor 
proved himself a marvellous talker, and it was his flaming 
words which especially enlivened these conversations: like 
a true Celt, he adored controversy and indulged his delight 
of battle. Between Walt and himself there were sometimes 
Homeric word tourneys, in which Walt, led in spite of him- 
self by this fever of eloquence, threw off his habitual reserve 
to swell the loud concert : for the two men, despite their affec- 
tionate harmony, differed strongly on certain points. On 
the question of slavery, notably, O'Connor was intractable. 
When in the height of the war, the Wound Dresser returning 
from the hospitals, death in his soul, letting escape from the 
depth of his bruised heart this exclamation: "This war 
must end!" O'Connor, leaping up, would cry: "As long 
as slavery lasts, the war must go on." 2 Walt made a mistake 
in surrendering his Dutch placidity and in not leaving his 
friend to his own fury, for one day a bad turn came. The 
two friends were discussing the question of suffrage rights 
for the blacks, which was then being agitated in the Senate; 
O'Connor defended ardently the principle of obligatory 
emancipation, his hobby. Walt who, in real clairvoyance, 
was not the dupe of theory and was not ignorant what 
"unchained brutes" the blacks admitted to citizenship 
would show themselves, wanted them gradually enfranchised. 
That was not democracy: it could only be based upon con- 
scious and worthy individuals. At a certain moment, the 
intractable O'Connor was furious, and Walt answered him 
violently — violence was very rare with him, but all the more 
terrible. They might resort to their fists, but this time they 
were too far apart. They parted in a quarrel. It was in 



Wamden Edition, VIII, p. 220. 

2 Kennedy: Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, pp. 84-35. 



GREAT COMPANIONS 213 

vain that their friends tried to reconcile the two men. 1 This 
happened in 1871. 2 During these years, they kept apart 
till the day when everything was forgotten and when an 
affection was reborn as fervent as before. Walt had had 
the intuition, from the first moment of their meeting in 
Boston, that some day the rabid doctrinarianism of his 
friend would separate them. 3 

However intense and confiding they were, these friend- 
ships were nevertheless insufficient to fill the entire need of 
tenderness which, far from weakening, was rather intensified 
in Walt's heart now that he was far from his city, far from 
his family, far from his old comrades. He was irresistibly 
drawn to primitive and tender people, ignorant of literature, 
unmindful of the high problems which fire men like O'Connor: 
he found in them people of his own type, and in the delight 
of proving himself one of them experienced in their company 
pure, peaceful joy. It was surely when with them that he 
passed the most delicious moments — arm in arm with some 
friend, who was ignorant of his authorship of Leaves of Grass, 
or at least cared nothing about it, he proved the intimacy 
of companionship. In his many years in Washington he 
became familiar with its streets and its people. He re- 
newed especially the old camaraderie of former years with 
omnibus drivers and conductors. John Burroughs, who 
lived then in daily intimacy with him, has left a vivid little 
picture of the poet, photographed in his favourite place, 
on the platform, near the conductor of whom we are to speak: 

. . . . A bearded, florid-faced man, elderly but agile, resting against 
the dash, by the side of the young conductor. . . . The man wears a 
broad brim hat. ... A strong, fat, fretful babe of fifteen months is 
worrying its mother in the crowded car: the white-hatted man reaches in- 
side and takes the babe from the mother out in the air ... in less than 
a minute it is sound asleep and the conductor gets off for his first meal . . . 



m. B. Binns: Life of Walt Whitman, p. 236. 

'Ellen Calder: Personal Recollections of Walt Whitman, Atlantic Monthly, June, 1907. 

'Complete Prose, p. 5\?.. 



£14 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

and now the white-hatted man, holding the slumbering child, also acts as 
conductor the rest of the distance. He makes a good conductor, too, 
pulling the bell to stop or go on as needed .* 

When he spent his vacation in New York Walt did not 
forget his friends of the line. One of them especially, the 
very one who figures in the account now to be given, filled 
in his heart and his life a place so exceptional that it must be 
mentioned by itself. One evening in 1865, Walt, returning 
from Burroughs's house, entered a Pennsylvania Avenue 
omnibus, and as the weather was bad he took a seat inside; 
a great cloak thrown over his shoulder gave him the appear- 
ance of an old sea wolf. He was the only passenger at that 
late hour and in such weather. After a time, the young 
fellow, who was keeping his melancholy place on the plat- 
form, entered without knowing why, drawn by a secret sym- 
pathy for the bearded man, and they joined in conversa- 
tion. From the first there was mutual attraction and in 
a quarter of an hour they were talking as familiarly as two 
friends. Walt, instead of getting out at the end of the trip, 
continued the whole way and back again with his friend. 2 
The conductor, Peter Doyle, was a young Irishman of nine- 
teen, a blacksmith's son, whose parents had emigrated to 
Virginia when he was a baby. At the outbreak of war he 
enlisted in the Southern ranks, and took part in the fighting. 
He was wounded and made prisoner: after leaving the hos- 
pital, he found this work as conductor. He was alone in life. 

From that evening they became inseparable companions. 
Doyle, when his work was done, would wait for the poet at 
his office, and they went together for long walks in the 
suburbs of Washington, happy release after the motionless, 
confining hours in the department. The two simple fellows 
were real adventurers when following the banks of the 
Potomac or one of the great highways encircling the capital, 
walking six to twelve miles and back again. Walt was a 

JJohn Burroughs: Birds and Poets, p. 224. 
^Calamus, p. 23. 



GREAT COMPANIONS 215 

tireless walker and wore out the legs of his young friend. All 
along the road he sang, whistled, recited from Shakespeare, 
shouted in passing through the woods, like a boy expanding all 
his young soul. He named the constellations for the young 
man and when he spoke of the stars his voice became 
eloquent and grave. Sometimes other friends were of the 
party. The poet thus enjoyed the happiest hours of all and, 
to his last day, he preserved the keen memory of these 
delicious, aimless strolls in the evening by moonlight, or on 
fair Sundays. They were happy years from 1866 to 1872. 
The road, the open air, the comrades, no joy of life was com- 
parable to this, when one has, like Walt, a heart athirst for 
nature, tenderness, and freedom. The sadness was not to 
be able to live forever and ever, anywhere, in the fields or on 
the shore, with the half dozen truly dear friends gathered in 
the course of life, loved because they have given you what is 
most precious. When Walt was free, and the little Irishman 
was at work, he mounted the omnibus and made many trips 
on the platform beside him. In the evening, he waited till the 
conductor had "swept," when they would go together and 
sit in a cafe on Washington Avenue. Sometimes the young 
man, worn by work, fell asleep at the table while the older 
one was talking; then Walt, respecting the sleep of youth, 
stayed there without saying a word to awake him till the 
place was ready to close. 1 The poet, a lover of music, used 
to take his "boy" to the navy concert, and it was always he 
who led him into some adventure; sometimes they went 
walking, bought a melon of a farmer's wife, and sat down 
in a doorway, in the open street, to enjoy it. Passersby 
glanced at them, and smiled at their appearance. 

Walt wished to introduce his companion to the great 
business of his life, his poems, to explain what was his 
intention, his effort, his idea. Doyle listened without in the 
least understanding what he was driving at. With the 
patient tenderness of an older brother, the poet tried to 

Walamus, pp. 24-25. 



216 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

awaken in the virgin mind the comprehension of things which 
is the theme of his book. He did not expect much in the way 
of result: he wanted but the unreserved affection of the 
youth. One day he made him a present of Drum Taps in 
manuscript, which Doyle, who had no idea of its value, mis- 
laid. 1 When the conductor, out of work, found himself 
short of money, W r alt loaned him some freely. In time of 
weariness or discouragement, the word of the great older 
man, who might have been the father and who wished only 
to be the tender friend, used to comfort the young lad, forbade 
him to be cast down, preached to him contentment and good 
humour, indispensable weapons in the daily struggle, he said. 

We are able to see the limitless affection which united 
two beings so dissimilar, thanks to the letters which Walt 
wrote, when he spent his annual vacation in New York, 
and later, after he had quitted Washington for good, to the 
young man whose absence was to him then a bereavement. 
These letters to his "dear little Peter, his darling son, his 
young and dear brother, his dear beloved comrade," breathe 
a purity, a Constance, a large tenderness, in which the man 
appears more truly than in the most perfect analyses of his 
commentators. It is to this source we must go to discover 
the great heart of love of the Good Gray Poet. It is also 
there, as in the letters to his mother, written from Washing- 
ton, during and after the war, that is revealed this soul of 
a little child, this soul divinely close to the simple ones, which 
he knew how to keep till his last day. 

What makes the singular attraction of this open-hearted 
correspondence full of commonplaces, incorrect, free from 
the least suspicion of literature, is that it lets us see the 
positive and the concrete in the life of the poet, it translates 
the infinite candour which is the base of his character. It 
shows us another aspect of the man who wrote Leaves of 
Grass, not by the reverse of his genius, but the common soil 



l Calamus, p. 30, 



GREAT COMPANIONS 217 

in which this genius had root. Walt was bound by all his 
fibres to average humanity, and he could not have come close 
to simple souls, except he proved himself one of them. It 
is indeed authentically he, the good rosy -cheeked giant, whom 
we hear in the tender and naive prattle of his letters to Peter 
Doyle and to his old mother — these letters where he loved to 
gossip of the thousand nothings of his bachelor life, in which 
he speaks of his shirts and a new vest with as much serious- 
ness as of a session of Congress; where he rejoices like a 
youngster at a gratuity given to employes which will allow 
him greater liberality to his family; where he celebrates in 
ecstatic terms the excellent coffee and the savory buckwheat 
cakes which his mother prepared for him for his morning 
meal. She is suffering from rheumatism in the wrist, as a 
result of household work, which she performed all her life; 
he begs her to find a woman to do the washing and the 
heavy work. The older the mother became — she was 
seventy at the close of the war — the more tender his solici- 
tude toward her. He asks constantly news of his brother 
George, who speculated in building like his father, and who, 
luckier than he, was making money. He sends them or 
marks for them articles which appear about himself, 
announcement of his volumes, knowing that they will mean 
little, but thinking they may give them pleasure. . . . 
In this poor chatter, we feel, however, a grandeur, the human 
grandeur, of Walt Whitman: and finding him so ordinary, 
so mediocre, so commonplace, so far from all arrogance and 
all pretention, it seems to us that we grasp better the ampli- 
tude of his personality, and that we are better prepared to 
understand his extraordinary book. These letters, without 
art and so touching, create an astonishment which resolves 
into joy — joy of meeting a being ample enough to comprehend 
at once the appetites, the preoccupations, the content of the 
mass, and the most sublime transport which the human soul 
could commit to words. They must be read to know all the 
good nature, simple heartiness, ingenuous joy, concealed in 



218 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

the heart of a sovereign poet-prophet; in them we see the 
summits and likewise the intimacies of the valley. 

Is it not strangely characteristic that the same man who 
wrote Song of Myself should write this letter among a hundred 
similar ones to an omnibus conductor? 

Brooklyn, October, '68. 
Dear Lewy, 

I wrote you but a few lines that you may know that I have not for- 
gotten you. . . . Duffy is here conducting an omnibus on Broadway 
and Fifth Avenue. He is the same old Duffy. I hear that William Syd- 
ner is in bed sick. Tell Johnny Miller that there are still traces of the old 
Broadway drivers, Balky Bill, Fred Kelly, Charles McLaughlin, Tom 
Riley, Etc. 

The chief characteristic of Whitman's letters to the young 
Irishman is the confident tenderness which they breathe, 
the absence of all suggestion of superiority; Walt was Walt 
and he was the older, but in the interchange of affection they 
were equals. Never, through absence, trials, and old age, 
did their friendship fail, despite the long interval of their 
letters. And to all the more emphasize the exceptional 
place which Peter Doyle filled in his life, Walt inscribed his 
name twice in his prose works, in evoking their long, joyful 
walks and their pleasure parties. 1 Doyle on his part 
always kept after his friend departed a tender, lasting 
memory of the dear old man, of the "affectionate father and 
comrade," of the cordial and gentle giant, by whose side, arm 
in arm, he many times tramped the avenues and highways. 
In the sanctuary of his simple and faithful heart Walt con- 
tinued to live, as in the old days. And on hearing Doyle 
speak of his Washington companion, the impression is that 
he was more intimately close to him than to any one. 2 

This companionship of Peter Doyle and Walt, which fills 
one period of his life, is the most vivid illustration which 
we know of the impassioned sympathy which impelled him 

Complete Prose, pp. 70 and 446. 
*Calam<ua, pp. 21-33. 



GREAT COMPANIONS 219 

to young men of the common people. It was one of the 
propensities very significant of the man, and by his own 
admission, the most fundamental. He once said in the 
presence of his friends: "Men of letters and artists seem to 
fly from companionship: to me it is exhilarating, affects me 
in the same way the light or the storm does." Walt sought 
especially for friends primitive and cordial natures, beings 
who gave themselves unreservedly; and it was with the 
uneducated, with young artisans, that he found the touch of 
humanity without alloy. He was irresistibly drawn" to 
them, and his magnetism of the strong man attracted them 
with the same power. As O. L. Triggs has written: "He 
fed upon people as bees upon flowers." 1 The extreme need 
of loving which tormented his heart overflowed in such 
affections as these. He had lived them with awful intensity, 
during the war, at bedsides where thousands of youths 
suffered; and at the approach of fifty, without a home as he 
was, because of his inviolable desire for independence, his 
thirst for intimacy and tenderness was intensified. Thus 
"dear son, my little Peter" was at once his child and com- 
rade. 

This imperious penchant for intimate comradeship which 
led him to choose his brothers from the anonymous crowd, 
was manifested in him with an entirety and a fervour which 
made it an emotion almost new in humanity. It was in all 
the strength of the word a passion, from which he extracted 
a joy which approaches close to a penetrating sorrow. 

I am he that aches with love. 1 

He has sung it, this great hunger, in the poems which are 
grouped under the title Calamus: in their moving and mys- 
terious verses are found repeated the secret thrills of his 
heart, and it was not without fear of being misunderstood, 
that he thus reveals himself, so intimate and more sacred 



*0. L. Triggs: Selections, Introduction, p. xl. 
^Leaves of .Grass, p. 93. 



220 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

seemed to him the strange sentiment which unites him to 
certain beings. To hold in his hand the hand of a friend, to 
feel the touch of his shoulder, to place his bearded lips on his 
cheek, flooded Walt with a happiness whose sweetness the 
world did not know. More than that, it appears, that in the 
love which he had known and enjoyed all his warm and sen- 
suous soul was lifted into virile friendships, to which clings, for 
this great Lover of the human individual, a perfume more 
subtle, a significance more remote. For Walt Whitman 
what he calls "manly attachment "or "binding affection "as 
opposed to "love of man and woman," had an immense im- 
portance and spread from the individual to the collective, 
to humanity. 

Resolved to sing no songs to-day but those of manly attachment, 

Projecting them along that substantial life, 

Bequeathing hence types of athletic love, 

Afternoon this delicious Ninth month in my forty-first year, 

I proceed for all who are or have been young men, 

To tell the secret of my nights and days, 

To celebrate the need of comrades. 1 

The unusual and impassioned character of these attach- 
ments of man to man naturally provoked the surprise of some 
commentators and incite special writers to place the poet as 
a sexual anomaly. The novelist, Johannes Schlaf, has defi- 
nitely replied to the more recent and copious of these psy- 
chopaths. 2 It is not less certain that the fervour of these 
attachments shows a singular phenomenon, which opens un- 
known perspectives in a life fecund in surprises. However 
ordinary, however close, Walt shows himself he is not less 
proved, on the other hand, an exceptional, because of the 
formidable personality which was his: and like exceptional 
beings, unique, he was a law unto himself. In his work as 
in his life, are strange and novel things, which will long 
remain unexplained. In any case, it is not the searchers 

^Leaves of Grass, p. 96. 
'Johannes Schlaf: Walt Whitman. 



GREAT COMPANIONS 221 

for anomalies who will ever find the key. Perhaps he 
who shall describe the exact nature of the attachment which 
united the Apostle of Galilee to his disciple John will be able 
to clear the mystery of love which is concealed in the tender 
comradeships of the Good Gray Poet. 



XVIII 
THE FIRST VICTORIES OF "LEAVES OF GRASS" 

There was a curious something in the destiny of Walt 
Whitman. When his incomparable prestige sufficed to 
assure him wherever he lived, a kind of celebrity, his fame as 
a poet remained almost nul. Aside from his little group of 
friends and passionate partisans who were fully aware of his 
importance as prophet, scarcely any one in Washington 
suspected that he was author of Leaves of Grass. Drum Taps 
had not been read. Some were curious as to the truth of the 
man in the big hat whom they met in the street, who was 
maybe a sea captain, a Virginia planter, or an old pirate; 
but no one supposed that he was a poet. So much did Walt, 
with illumined features and his flourishing health, appear 
remote from the conventional type of poet. 

Yet, Leaves of Grass, relegated to the background of his 
preoccupation during the ardent years of the war, was not 
forgotten; from the time of his employment in the Interior, he 
utilized the leisure of his official life to revise slowly and 
minutely, in view of a new edition, the volume of 1860, lost 
in the wreck of the firm of Thayer and Eldridge. This work 
was in progress when Secretary Harlan took to his office to test 
it better the erased and annotated copy in which Walt in- 
dicated the changes which he wished to make in his text. 
He carried on slowly, according to his wont, this labour 
which he was to renew unwearied during his whole life, per- 
suaded each time that he was preparing the completed edi- 
tion of his work: but life was the stronger, and in proportion 
as Walt pressed the sap, the Leaves grew. During the sum- 
mer of 1866 he came to New York, to busy himself in the 
printing of the book. 

222 



FIRST VICTORIES OF "LEAVES OF GRASS" 223 

Since the close of 1862, when he left for the battle-fields of 
Virginia, Walt forsook Manhattan: but he did not lose all 
contact with the dear city whose every pavement reminded 
him of the history of his wonderful youth. As long as he 
was employed in the Department of Justice, he took rather 
long vacations every summer — sometimes for three months — 
which he used to spend in Brooklyn with his mother. 

In revisiting New York, he found, each time, the big city 
more beautiful than before and wondered at it with the 
words and the ecstasy of a child. In a note to a Washington 
friend is found described, in the impressionistic manner 
usual in his intimate letters, that fascination which the city 
exercised upon him: 

Harry, you would much enjoy going round N. Y. with me, if it were 
possible, and then how much I should like having you with me. This 
great city, with all its crowds and splendor, and Broadway fashion and 
women, and amusements, and the river and bay, and shipping, and the 
many magnificent new buildings, and Central Park and 5th Avenue, and 
the endless processions of private vehicles and the finest teams I ever saw, 
for miles long of a fine afternoon — altogether, they make up a show that I 
can richly ^pend a month in enjoying — for a change from my Washington 
life. I sometimes think that I am the particular man who enjoys the show 
of all these things in N. Y. more than any other mortal — as if it was all 
got up just for me to observe and study. 1 

The ocean, above all, of which he was deprived at Wash- 
ington, to see it again, to sniff anew its odour, he was as a 
man intoxicated. Here again he subjects himself to the 
great enchantment, is filled with the great plaint of eternity, 
which had soothed him in his youth: 

By the Sea-shore, Coney Island, 
Sunday 3 p. m. 
Dear Pete: I will write you a few lines as I sit here, on a clump of sand 
by the sea shore — having some paper in my haversack, and an hour or two 
yet before I start back. Pete, I wish you were with me the few hours 
past, — I have just had a splendid swim and souse in the surf — the waves 



l Calamus,'i). 19. 



%U WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

are slowly rolling in, with hoarse roar that is music to my ears — the breeze 
blows pretty brisk from southwest, and the sun is partially clouded — from 
where I sit I look out on the bay and down the Narrows, vessels sailing in 
every direction in the distance — a great big black long ocean steamship 
streaking it up toward New York — and the lines of hills and mountains, 
far, far away on the Jersey coast, a little veiled with blue vapor — here 
around me, as I sit it is nothing but barren sand— but I don't know how 
long I could sit here, to that soothing, rumbling murmuring of the waves — 
and then the salt breeze. 1 

Walt also used his vacation profitably to issue his book. 
Again he had no publisher. By his salary as clerk happily 
he could support the expense of the coming volume. / This 
fourth edition appeared about November, 1866. 2 It bore only 
for a title: Leaves of Grass, New York, 1867, and did not con- 
tain the portrait. Again is found the contents of the edition 
of 1860, but redistributed according to the demands of a 
total revision. Not only were the titles changed, but the 
grouping was not the same, and the sections of long pieces 
appeared numbered. The work continued to be arranged 
conformably to its definitive editing: it became more and 
more organic. Above all, Walt who six years before was 
deaf to the entreaties of his friends, among them Emerson, 
determined of his own will to suppress some of the crude 
words and too vivid images which had created a great 
furore. It was not in the least to be conformed to the public 
taste that he made this suppression. There was only this, 
that having been through the war and its horrors and having 
lived to be forty-seven, the author gained a new light, and 
that in rereading Leaves of Grass, he judged the present time 
little in touch with the general tone of his poem. \ To com- 
pensate, some verses inspired by the war, source of so much 
emotion for him, were placed here and there among the old 
poems. 
; A little later — probably the following year— the author 



l Calamus, p. 84. 

2 Camden Edition, VIII, p. 186. 



FIRST VICTORIES OF "LEAVES OF GRASS" 225 

desiring to add to his book Drum Taps, which appeared 
separately in 1865, bound the whole in one volume, whose 
three hundred and seventy pages comprehended the mass 
of his poetical work up to that time. The additions, Drum 
Taps, Sequel to Drum Taps, and Songs of Parting, remained 
with their independent pagination: it was the first stage of 
the definite incorporation with Leaves of Grass of the war 
poems. The edition thus completed amounted to two hun- 
dred and thirty-six poems, of which only eight were new. ? 

Nothing especial appears to have characterized the fate 
of this edition. It was little or not at all displayed, Walt 
being his own publisher. It had certainly a small sale, for 
he wrote to Peter Doyle, in the fall of 1868, that there re- 
mained in his hands but two hundred and thirty copies, 1 
which was the proof that some twenty persons in the world 
were interested then in the new poet. The "critics" also 
were interested, in their own way. They were ambushed 
in the dailies and profited by it to republish their old lam- 
poons. Walt, whom these attacks of waggery, sometimes 
acrimonious, did not the least disturb, told Doyle what re- 
sistance the sale of his book met: "New York, October 14, 
'68. There is a pretty strong enmity here toward me and 
Leaves of Grass among certain classes — not only that it is a 
great mess of crazy talk and hard words all tangled up, with- 
out sense or meaning (which, by the by, is, I believe, your 
judgment about it) — but others sincerely think that it is a 
bad book, improper, and ought to be denounced and put 
down, and its author along with it. There are some veno- 
mous but laughable squibs occasionally in the papers. One 
said that I had received 25 guineas for a piece in an English 
magazine, but that it was worth all that for any one to read 
it. Another, the World, said: 'Walt Whitman was in town 
yesterday carrying the blue cotton umbrella of the future' 
(it had been a drizzly forenoon) so they go it. When they 
get off a good squib, however, I laugh at it just as much as 

iCalamuz, p. 43. 



WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

any one. . . ." 1 All this was rather sad; but on hearing 
this buzzing of the flies which accompanied his slow, ele- 
phantine step, Walt could have repeated to himself the words 
of his poem: 

I am more resolute because all have denied me 
than I could ever have been had all accepted me. 8 

But the much-enduring man had, outside of himself, mo- 
tives for not being disturbed. He was no longer alone as 
in the first days. His two loyal friends, O'Connor and 
Burroughs, did not remain silent: O'Connor obtained from 
H. J. Raymond, editor-in-chief of the New York Times, who 
nevertheless reproved Whitman, 3 the right to greet in his 
journal the new edition of Leaves of Grass? and Burroughs 
dedicated to the poet an enthusiastic study, which the Gal- 
axy, of December, 1866, published. Of all the testimonies 
which allow us to see the poet in the glorious serenity of 
his autumn, there could be none more complete or truer 
than the pages written, at different times, by the congen- 
ial and friendly colleague, John Burroughs. They are 
essential notations from life, in which Walt Whitman of 
the Washington years is portrayed. This article was 
but the prelude of homage which John Burroughs meant 
to render to his great comrade. In 1867, after having 
lived for four years in his daily intimacy, he brought 
out a little volume of a hundred pages, entitled Notes on 
Walt Whitman as Poet and Person, where, in a very 
simple form, far removed from the flamboyant manner of 
O'Connor, but with accent of faith and of deep sincerity, 
the poet was painted in his person, his race, his habits, and 
his work; the leading ideas of the sketch were penetrated 
with light and justified by a solid and penetrating intel- 



tCalamus, pp. 44-45. 

leaves of Grass, p. 251. 

'Bliss Perry: Walt Whitman, p. 176. 

«New York Times, December 2, 1866. See Oamdm Edition, VUI, p. 189. 



FIRST VICTORIES OF "LEAVES OF GRASS" 227 

ligence. In presenting boldly this little monument, the 
author was not merely presenting himself as the defender 
of a misunderstood man; he expressed in his Preface: "Al- 
though Walt Whitman, as Poet and Person, remains yet 
comparatively an unknown, unregarded figure upon the vast 
and crowded canvas of our age, I feel for reasons attempted 
to be set forth in the following pages — that I am in some 
sort called upon to jot down, while they are vivid upon me, 
my observation of him and his writings." 1 And he added 
further on, with a sure foresight: "There will come a time 
when these things will be invaluable." 2 

Burroughs, like O'Connor previously, hailed in Walt 
Whitman a universal genius, who had to suffer the fate of 
great discoverers, repudiated by their time, and in whom, 
for the first time, was incarnated America and Democracy. 
Although devoid of all emphasis, the homage was integral; 
the friend, without caring for incredulous and stupid mockers, 
published his faith and compiled the first document which 
enables us to-day to know the real man which was Walt. 
His courage was as sure as his insight, in a time when Whit- 
man did not count in America a single champion, except 
two or three personal friends, and saw himself kept on the 
index by all the literary men and their followers. The mod- 
est Notes of Burroughs was the first volume of a series which 
later was increased little by little in the course of years, and 
promises in our day to reach unusual proportions. 

In the very country which Walt glorified, incompre- 
hension persisted, despite the advertisement of O'Connor 
and Burroughs. Something was however slowly preparing for 
him, far away on the other side of the Atlantic, in the old 
mother-country. The few copies of the first two editions 
of Leaves of Grass which had reached England were passed 
almost unnoticed; in the meantime a friend of Ruskin, 
Thomas Dixon, who acquired in a sale a small lot of the edi- 

^ohn Burroughs: Notes, p. 3. f 

*Id.: p. 5. 



m WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

tion of 1855, sent a volume to William Bell Scott, who 
himself read it to William Michael Rossetti. Interest in 
the American poet was thus aroused in a little circle of 
fervent artists which included such personalities as the two 
Rossettis and Swinburne. And when the edition of 1860 
appeared, it met passionate admirers among literary and 
university youth; a second time was proved the curious 
destiny of this book, written by an artisan for artisans, and 
recognized only by intellectuals, written by an American for 
Americans, and scarcely noticed but by foreigners. 

From that time Whitman had in England a small group 
of partisan enthusiasts, of whom he had no knowledge till 
they made themselves known. Interest in his personality 
and his book was fairly awakened in some groups, in 1866, 
for Moncure Conway, who had been the first to come, at the 
advice of Emerson, and to find the poet at home, shortly 
after the edition of 1866, and who was so astonished to meet 
a man tranquil and sweet instead of a fierce and bellicose 
giant whom he was expecting to encounter, published in the 
Fortnightly Review 1 a well-meaning article, but showy: "Mr. 
Conway's article is as impudent as it is cordial, it is a mixture 
of good and bad," 2 wrote Walt to his mother, when he sent 
it to her. He did not like the journalistic amplifications 
and all his life took great care to be presented in the light of 
exact truth. 

But English admiration was about to reveal itself 
more worthily. W. M. Rossetti, who conceived the 
idea of publishing Leaves of Grass in England, commu- 
nicated with Walt in order to discuss details of the pub- 
lication which he projected. Letters were exchanged in 
which was strengthened a warm friendship between the 
two men. Walt was full of confidence in his judicious 
friend; he consented to the idea of a selection of poems. It 
was in this form that the volume appeared in 1868- — the 

^Fortnightly Review, October 15, 1866, p. 537. 
^Camden Edition, VIII, p. 186. 



FIRST VICTORIES OF "LEAVES OF GRASS" 229 

publisher J. C. Hotten — with the title: Poems of Walt 
Whitman. It comprised a hundred pieces, the Preface of 
the 1855 edition and an introduction, in which W. M. Ros- 
setti declared outright that the author of Leaves of Grass 
"realized the greatest work of our period in poetry." In 
the minds of Walt's first English admirers this selection 
represented the necessary stage of initiation with the view 
of a future acceptance of the whole book, and perhaps they 
were right, since the effect produced by this volume was un- 
deniable: it assured the reputation of Walt Whitman in 
England, and won him the enthusiastic sympathy of a new 
generation of poets, critics, and artists, who naturally ad- 
mired him according to their own particular point of view, 
a little exclusive, somewhat literary, but their homage com- 
forted much more than what was offered many a time, in 
his own country, by gross and puerile scribbling. 

A short time after the publication of this volume W. M. 
Rossetti received several letters from a young man, who 
declared himself already a passionate admirer, for many 
years, of the great American; 1 it was John Addington Sy- 
monds, who had become the correspondent of Whitman and 
one of the first among the small company of faithful 
friends. He was an Oxonian of exceptional intellectuality, 
whom a feeble constitution doomed to a lamentable existence 
unceasingly menaced by neurasthenia. When his friend, 
Frederick Myers, read to him, in 1865, passages of Leaves of 
Grass, Symonds experienced, he tells us, to the very marrow 
of his bones, an electric shock. The enormous vitality of 
the book revolutionized this ardent soul in an infirm body, 
and later Symonds nourished himself with these verses to 
the point of declaring later that Whitman had more in- 
fluence on him than Plato and Goethe and for that matter 
any masterpiece except the Bible. 2 This was one of Walt's 
most brilliant conquests that of this university man, whose 



iH. H. Gilchrist: Anne Gilchrist, p. 183. 
iCamderis Compliment to Walt Whitman, p. 73. 



230 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

intellectual and aristocratic prejudices he had overthrown. 
Symonds decided not to publish his study till after Whit- 
man's death. 

Upon others the volume edited by Rossetti produced the 
effect of an illumination: notably upon Charles Kent, editor 
of the Sun, who published in his journal an enthusiastic 
review of it. 1 The same year the poet Robert Buchanan 
soon proved himself the indefatigable champion of Walt 
Whitman in England, devoted an essay to him, 2 and Swin- 
burne, in his book on William Blake, established a parallel 
between the verse of the painter-poet and those of the 
American. But the acceptance which filled Walt with 
pride and joy was the one, unexpected and significant, of an 
admirable woman who became his "greatest friend." 

Anne Gilchrist, widow of the author of William Blake and 
a friend of Rossetti and Carlyle, was a woman of large and 
sane superiority, open to the highest speculation, yet keeping 
herself profoundly feminine and maternal. She read the 
Poems edited by W. M. Rossetti a year after they appeared, 
and its impression was such that she immediately asked him 
to lend her the complete edition of Leaves of Grass. The orig- 
inal work with its crudity only increased her enthusiasm, and 
in a series of letters to the friend who helped her to know 
the man entire, she poured out all the fervour which she felt to- 
ward the poet who awakened in her a whole world of new 
emotion. "In regard to those poems which raised so loud 
an outcry," she writes, "I shall take courage to say frankly 
that I find them also beautiful, and that I think even 
you have misapprehended them. Perhaps indeed they 
were chiefly written for wives. I rejoice to have read 
them. . . ." 3 These letters of a woman seemed so 
beautiful to W. M. Rossetti that after counselling with his 



*H. H. Gilchrist: Anne Gilchrist, p. 183. 

2 Robert Buchanan: David Gray and Other Essays, p. 203. 

'Bliss Perry: Walt Whitman, p. 189. 



FIRST VICTORIES OF "LEAVES OF GRASS' 5 231 

friend to publish them, he sent them to America, where they 
appeared, anonymously and lightly retouched, in a Boston 
review, the Radical, in May, 1870. 1 In a Puritan com- 
munity, this Judgment of an English Woman on Walt Whit- 
man could not fail to make an impression. No one had as 
yet dared to speak with such sane freedom of the great pagan. 
In reading the eloquent pages of this unknown woman, who 
"having been a wife and a happy mother, learned to accept 
everything with tenderness, to feel something sacred in all," 2 
and whose conscious enthusiasm spread like a flood, the 
friends of the poet were in transport. As for Walt he ex- 
perienced, at that moment, one of the gravest and intensest 
joys of his life — as strong, if not more so, than at the time of 
the letter from Emerson and the plea of O'Connor. If 
that woman were near him ! How she understood him in his 
entirety, how she was herself revealed unreservedly through- 
out this testimony, with all the spontaneous warmth of a 
soul rich and congenial. She was truly of her race and came 
forward to justify him. And what a prop for his despised 
book this luminous plea dared by an extraordinary woman, a 
respected mother — what answer to his detractors! The 
soul of Walt dilated in reading these moving pages: it was 
like a whiff of strengthening air which came to him from the 
other side of the Atlantic. He always had more faith in the 
intuitive comprehension of true women than in the reasoning 
intelligence of dialecticians, and the issue proved him right. 
He was happier than if he had sold at a single stroke a thou- 
sand copies of his book. "Have you read the article?" he 
asked his friend Miss Helen Price whom he met on the 
street, declaring immediately that it gave him great pleasure. 3 
Two years later, he again repeated to W. M. Rossetti that 
nothing in his life as a poet had comforted him so much as 



1 Reprinted in H. H. Gilchrist's Anne Gilchrist, pp. 287-307. 
J H. EL Gilchrist: Anne Gilchrist, p. 289. 
»Bucke: Walt Whitman, p. 81. 



232 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

"the warm appreciation and friendship of that true, full- 
grown woman." 1 

A little later, Anne Gilchrist communicated directly with 
Whitman; and it was the beginning of an affectionate cor- 
respondence, in which these two beings, so close in tempera- 
ment and intuition, reflected all the respect, all the confidence 
and admiration which they felt one for the other. Six years 
after the publication of her letters, Anne Gilchrist went to 
America, and the bond which was formed between them was 
strengthened by the personal contact of the man, whom she 
found not only in perfect accord with the image which she 
made of him, but greater perhaps than his book. And Walt 
likewise always spoke in touching and grave words of his 
admirable friend. When he lost her, in 1885, he wrote to 
her son Herbert, in expressing the desire to keep for himself 
only the letters which she had written him: ". . . Among 
the perfect women whom I have known (and it was my un- 
speakable good fortune to have had the best possible for 
mother, sisters, and friends), I have known none more per- 
fect in every relation than my dear, dear friend Anne Gil- 
christ." 2 And piously, toward his seventieth year, reviewing 
the affections of his life, he wished to commemorate "the 
noblest of his friends (to-day buried in an English tomb) in 
dedicating a poem to her dear memory." 3 

Decidedly there was a glimmer in the horizon. Farther 
even than the bounds of the English language, an approba- 
tion came to Walt Whitman. In that same year 1868 the 
poet Ferdinand Freiligrath published in the Allegemeinen 
Zeitung of Augsburg a study of the Poet of Democracy, sow- 
ing thus the first germ, which was to fructify beautifully from 
his revelation in Germany. In the world a little nucleus of 
admirers was formed. Little mattered what was beyond 
in Europe, and that America remained deaf to the call of 



1 Bucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 72. 
2 H. H. Gilchrist: Anne Gilchrist, pp. v- 
s Leaves of Grass, p. 397. 



FIRST VICTORIES OF "LEAVES OF GRASS" 233 

her poet; once admit any part, the book had enough power in 
it to propagate itself and to make the tour of the globe. One 
day it would end perhaps by offering itself, encircled with 
glory, to American eyes, at last opened. 

About fifteen years had thus passed since the day when, 
shy and proud, Walt put his viking ship afloat, shaped en- 
tirely by his own hands. 1 

x This chapter gains new significance by the publication of the Letters of Anne Gilchrist and Walt Whit' 
man, edited by Thomas Harned, 1918, Tr. 



XIX 
THE STRICKEN OAK 

Decidedly, there was a bit of a change in the situation of 
the poet: this could be seen in the testimonies which he 
received during the last year of his stay in Washington — a 
period for him of very great literary activity. Then from 
1868 to 1872 his name appears here and there signed to a 
poem in various reviews and friendly journals. 1 

There was more: Walt was invited by the American In- 
stitute of New York to recite a poem on September 7, 1871, 
at the opening of the fortieth annual exposition of national 
industry. 2 The poet accepted and read, in a hall heaped 
with specimens of produce, merchandise, machines, and 
implements, his Song of the Exposition. The following year 
it was the United Literary Societies of Dartmouth in New 
Hampshire which invited him to deliver the Commencement 
Poem. The choice of a man objected to by men of good 
standing, for an academic solemnity, may appear singular 
enough: indeed it seems, according to recent avowals, that 
the author of Leaves of Grass had been chosen by the students 
to annoy the faculty. 3 " Everything went off well," the poet 
wrote to Peter Doyle, the summer of 1872, the summer he 
spent in Brooklyn. He recited the poem: As a Strong Bird 
on Pinions Free. 4 He profited by his stay in New England, 
whose quiet green villages he loved, to cross Vermont to 
Lake Champlain and to pass a day or two at Burlington 



Wamden Edition, X, pp. 178-179. 

2H. Traubel: With Walt Whitman in C*mden, pp. 326-327. 

*Bliss Perry: Walt Whitman, pp. 203-205. 

^Leaves of Grass, p. 346. 

234 



THE STRICKEN OAK 235 

where his "dear sister Hannah" lived, far from her people — 
not happily married. 

The year 1871 was for the poet singularly rich: three vol- 
umes, issued in Washington, bear this date. Especially a 
pamphlet entitled Democratic Vistas, the first work in prose 
published by Walt since he became a new man. It was on 
one of his favourite themes, or rather one of the aspects of the 
only great theme which filled his life : the justification of the 
Democracy of the New World by a new Literature which 
should be equal to the exigencies of the race and the time. 
Till then he was solicitous only to exalt the Individual and 
the American Nationality and to leave in shadow some of 
the frightful realities which his country exemplified, realities 
which he knew better than any one: now he threw a flood of 
light on these enormities — the ignoble greed of riches, vul- 
garity of manners, political corruption, meanness of ideals. 
These he stigmatized with an enormous verve and resent- 
ment. Had Walt lost then at Washington, among the 
bureaucrats, his joyous and boundless optimism? Never, 
for he affirmed anew, with as much entirety as in his Preface 
of 1855, his unshakable confidence in the destiny of a race, 
called according to him to surpass all others; but, that she 
might be worthy of the great opportunities which her im- 
mense territory and the energy of her people offered her, 
there was need of great Writers, sprung from her, like Homer 
from Greek soil, and who would address themselves to her 
soul to awaken and sustain this soul, to exalt and show it the 
way. There were needed these precursors, source from 
which the higher moral, spiritual, religious life, of the mass 
was to be fed, that it might not sink under the enormous 
materialism which it possessed. And projecting his looks far 
from the terrifying sadness of the present the author enu- 
merated the real splendours of the future continent, such as he 
glimpsed it and as it ought to be. The article was admirable 
in strength, spirit, accent; it was at once an examination of 
the national conscience, an outline of high sociology, a 



236 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

pamphlet, an act of lyric faith. The man gave himself to it 
wholly, and verily revealed himself with the fervour of a 
prophet. He had worked on it many years j 1 and these pages, 
which will one day be a classic, where Walt Whitman spoke 
with so much fervour to his people to avert them from the 
danger which threatened them and to point to them the 
remedy, passed unnoticed in America. "No one reads it, no 
one calls for it," he wrote the following year to one of his 
English admirers. 

The second publication of that year was a collection of 
verse entitled, Passage to India, in which, among some old 
poems, appeared twenty-three unpublished pieces. These 
were not, as one soon sees, merely a sprout of Leaves of Grass 
whose trunk strengthened each season, projected new 
branches: but, when he published them, these hundred and 
twenty pages represented in the poet's mind the first 
stage of a second volume of verse which was henceforth to 
accompany Leaves of Grass and where, after having sung the 
plenitude of living, he included the thought and emotion of 
his old age. The poem which gave its title to the collection 
proved that his inspiration had not weakened, and it will re- 
main among his more absolute pieces: the poem is founded 
upon two recent events, the cutting of the Isthmus of Suez 
and the completion of the transcontinental railway. It de- 
scribes in words of religious cosmic joy the emotion of a 
soul which after having made the circuit of the earth and be- 
coming enraptured with the consciousness of its unity — the 
Orient, cradle of humanity, bound at last to the Occident, 
fulfilling the vision of Columbus — takes its flight beyond. 

There was finally a fifth reappearance of Leaves of Grass, 
No sooner was one edition ready than the poet planned 
changes, new architectural arrangements. As much as 
Walt lived, his book lived with him, and consequently kept 
evolving. This time Drum Taps was definitely incorporated 
with the main work, which contained but thirty new pieces. 

Wamden Edition, VIII, p. 231. 



THE STRICKEN OAK 237 

A little later, following his particular method of juxtaposing 
before fusing, he made a second impression in which appeared 
as annexes the collection of Passage to India and the Song of 
the Exposition, which had already been published in pamph- 
let by Roberts Brothers, of Boston. Enlarged by this new 
story, the edifice acquired proportions more and more impos- 
ing: it amounted now to two hundred and sixty-three pieces, 
distributed in groups or separate. Materially, the volume 
was attractive in appearance and was offered perhaps as the 
most beautiful edition published up to this time. 1 However, 
like the preceding one, no firm protected it and it entered the 
world on his own responsibility. Walt championed it to the 
extent of becoming his own publisher. 

Some requests came, from beyond the sea especially; the 
sale was very modest, considering that for iive years this 
edition was on the market. 2 Nevertheless the author wrote 
that his "book went admirably." Some dozen copies sold 
sufficed to fill the candid and confident soul of the Good Gray 
Poet. It was not a success, far from it. But did not Walt 
have infinite patience within him, an unquenchable fountain 
of patience, cosmic so to speak? Does the plant wither 
when the rain tarries in coming and does not the seed wait 
in silence that the season revolve for its germination. . . ? 
Never a complaint escaped him of the ingratitude or indif- 
ference of men. In the depth of his being was perpetuated 
a silent contentment which passed all the contentment of the 
earth. It was to his disposition that he owed that confidence 
and that patience too strong to be uprooted by external 
events. 

Moreover, despite the small sales, or even none perhaps, 
of his books, it was perceptible that the portion of the ground 
already won was broadening by a slow but continuous 
progress. The little phalanx of his admirers insensibly grew 
about his book, without any one noting it in the indifferent 

iBucke: Walt Whitman, p. 146, and Calamus, p. 88. 
*Bucke: Walt Whitman, p. 1 16. 



238 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

world. But Walt kept account of it, and this slender form 
of popularity satisfied him; that constant advance, was it 
not significant? The luminous pages of Anne Gilchrist dis- 
posed some people to revise their first impression. A second 
edition of John Burroughs's Notes, supplemented by new 
pages, appeared in 1871, and, the same year, Swinburne 
addressed a thrilling salutation to his great confrere: To 
Walt Whitman in America 1 — famous poem where the better 
note of the great artist and libertarian vibrates. Tennyson, 
to whom Walt, his junior by ten years, sent Leaves of Grass, 
acknowledged it in very friendly words: "I am in contact 
with many of your works," he wrote in July, 1877, "I have 
read them with interest and I can see that you have a gen- 
erous nature and worthy of being loved;" and the aristocratic 
poet invited the Manhattan bard to come to him, should he 
ever cross the Atlantic. The following year he sent him a 
signed photograph, and, from that day, very warm epistolary 
relations were established between them. 2 Edward Dowden, 
author of a life of Shelley, a professor in Dublin, rendered a 
significant homage to the new poet in his essay on the Poetry 
of Democracy* Other articles, notably of Buxton Forman, 4 
the Shelleyan, and of Roden Noel, 5 letters, appreciations came 
regularly from old England, who rejoiced in the expanding of 
her language in free, unlooked for, splendid flowers, juicy 
with the substance of a new soil. It was not to be wondered 
at that these litterati who made a cult of Shelley, the great 
pagan soul, should feel powerfully drawn to this other and 
more modern and greater pagan who had risen on the shore 
beyond the Atlantic: just as it was not strange that Walt had 
found his first American admirer among the devotees of 
Emerson. Despite enormous divergences, invisible relations 
exist between these three individualities. 

X A. G. Swinburne: Songs Before Sunrise. 
8 Donaldson: Waif Whitman (he Man, pp. 223-226. 
•Westminster Review, July, X871. 
*Buxton Forman: Our Living Poets-, 
6Thet)ark Blue, October and November, 1871. 



THE STRICKEN OAK 239 

At this time Whitman was introduced in Copenhagen by 
Rudolf Schmidt who, not content with affirming his ad- 
miration, 1 translated into Danish Democratic Vistas. There 
was still something better: Revue des Deux Mondes 2 dedi- 
cated without reserve twenty pages to a man whose "repug- 
nant materialism," " detestable" instincts, "grotesque" jargon 
and the manners of one escaped from Charenton 3 did 
not, however, justify the ignoring of some gifts which, re- 
grettably, had to be recognized. However circumspect and 
sown with reprobation was the homage, Walt could be proud 
of his victory. In France he found likewise a fervent ad- 
mirer in the person of a descendant of Lucien Bonaparte, 
born in Ireland, Charles Bonaparte Wyse, who, some years 
afterward, adapted in Provengal, a dialect which especially 
fascinated him, some portion of Leaves of Grass* In America, 
on the contrary, advocates were still few. 5 It must be said 
that in the course of his pilgrimage through the sad fields of 
public indifference it was far from the continent that the 
author of Leaves of Grass reaped the greatest number of ad- 
mirers. 

All the same, it was not without a certain satisfaction that 
Walt, in 1872, made a list of his foreign disciples on the 
last page of a little book, which he published at the same 
time as his Dartmouth College poem, As A Strong Bird on 
Pinions Free, and various new pieces, among them The 
Mystic Trumpeter. This poem he recited at the request of 
his friends, in his last years, and the pathetic lines addressed 
to conquered France, to comfort her in her distress. At this 
time Walt, who had the sensation of engaging in a battle in 
which he might be defeated, believed it still serviceable to his 
cause to republish the anonymous articles on himself. 6 He 

i For Ide og Virkelghed, February, 1872. 

*The Bentzon: An American Poet, Revue des Deux Mondes, 1872. 

J The French equivalent of Bedlam. Tr. 

♦Donaldson: Walt Whitman the Man, pp. 215-220. 

6 Joaquin Miller became a Whitman follower now. See Calamus, p. 9S. 

«Bliss Perry: Walt Whitman, pp. 206-210. 



240 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

would not abandon his book, which was himself, at a time 
which he considered as the going into action. 

During this Washington period Walt did not cease to show 
the external signs of a magnificent health. His bright com- 
plexion and his youthful manner proved, in spite of his gray 
hair, the active man brimming with life that his contempo- 
raries have painted for us. Nevertheless he noted well, by 
certain fleeting symptoms, that he no longer enjoyed that 
perfect physical equilibrium which, up to his prostration in 
the summer of 1864, had given him the assurance of being 
invulnerable. Time and again he complained of pains in 
the head and dizziness. 1 Walt had not eliminated from his 
system the poison of the wounds he so long dressed. 

In August and September, 1869, these disturbing illnesses 
became more intense. "It is difficult to know exactly what 
it is and what it may do," he writes. "The doctor says it 
comes from the hospital malaria, that poison of the hospital 
which my system absorbed for years." 2 It was the following 
year that he began to wear glasses for reading and writing. 
The prostration returned at various times and was more 
or less acute, but his powerful constitution always conquered » 
when he felt ill he nursed himself in his own way and refused 
to take drugs. In 1872 he still suffered from his in- 
sidious illness : he passed a part of February, March, and the 
beginning of April at Brooklyn with his mother, then he re- 
turned there in June and July, and experienced a new attack. 
It was with these auguries that he journeyed toward the 
year 1873, the year he was fifty-four. Year 1873 : fatal time, 
dolorous date, written as the lightning flash in this proud 
life, now utterly shattered. . . . The first of January he 
fell very ill; but this passed as before. The twenty-third, 
after a series of little repulsed shocks, came the supreme and 
definitive attack which he described to his friend Doctor 
Bucke. He was reading Bulwer's What Will He Do With It? 

Wamden Edition, VIII, p. 180. 
* Calamus, pp. 53-56. 



THE STRICKEN OAK 241 

at his office in the department. He rose to go to his room 
and one of the guards noticing how ill he looked accom- 
panied him home, and after a sleep of several hours he found 
that he could move neither arm nor left leg, nor raise him- 
self, nor make a movement. He thought the attack would 
pass. 1 

It did not pass indeed, for, this time, the man was felled. 
The man marvellously alive, who to his forty-fifth year had 
not known an hour of sickness and who gloried in it so 
openly, saw a period brutally placed at the foot of the chapter 
of his boundless, alert, joyous years. Ended the long road 
jaunts with Peter Doyle, ended the fine parties at the edge 
of the Potomac. . . . Walt was to be an invalid always. 
In spite of intervals of improvement he was never again to 
be the man he had been. After some admonitory rumb- 
lings the storm suddenly broke upon the great oak, breaking 
half its branches. And before the catastrophe one experi- 
ences an emotion, as if one looked at the falling of a wing 
of a great building: it was in truth the glorious edifice of his 
vitality, the enormous and splendid figure of the Good Gray 
Poet, now collapsed under a stroke of fate, now the lament- 
able moment which opens a new chapter in his life, that of 
old age and suffering. 

The attack of January 23rd kept Walt abed for three weeks. 
His serenity never forsook him — not more than it forsook 
him for the twenty years which were left him to live his im- 
potent existence. He wrote regularly to his mother — the 
exact truth, neither better nor worse. These letters of the 
sick Wound Dresser to his mother — which report his condition 
day by day — are a veritable poem of sweetness, tenderness, 
fortitude, whose every strophe one might detail; slowly, very 
slowly the use of his limb and his left arm was partly re- 
covered. He did not complain: he had all that he wished — 
"little extras and the superfluities" as he wrote his mother. 
His friends kept themselves posted, the newspapers having 

*Bucke: Walt Whitman, pp. 45-46. 



242 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

announced that Walt was very ill; the doctor visited him 
every day. His close friends, like Peter Doyle, Charles El- 
dridge, Burroughs, Mrs. O'Connor, came to the sick man. 
Peter Doyle especially was made nurse and did not leave 
during his free hours. He brought to the recluse the air 
from without, now that the good day of the comrades, their 
coming and going, was never to be again. 

Thus the weeks passed, a little monotonous. "I have 
tacked your picture on the wall, at the foot of the bed," he 
writes to his mother, "the one I like — it looks as natural as 
can be — and is quite company for me — as I am alone a good 
deal (and prefer to be)." 1 Soon he was able to be lifted, and 
to spend some hours in his room near the stove. Later, on 
February 17th, he could go downstairs and walk fifty feet 
supported on the arm of a friend, and thus breathe draughts 
of air. It was the seclusion which especially oppressed him, 
for he did not suffer. 

His appetite was fair and he had no appearance of an in- 
valid. Only the "distress" in the head, resulting from the 
stroke, caused him torment. Relief from this was impossible. 
It was indeed hard for a man of his strength, but he had no 
reason to complain. To heed him he was as well as possible 
and ought to deem himself devilish happy that his condition 
was not worse. His mind was perfectly clear and his good 
humour unalterable. Little by little and with much diffi- 
culty he ventured farther in the street, and even lifted him- 
self into a tram. One day he went as far as his office, but he 
could not work. Soon spring came, the invalid saw the 
grass become green again and the buds of the willow swell. 
In the middle of April Doctor Drinkard, who attended him 
and in whom Walt had every confidence, tried treatment by 
electricity. 

In May, when he was passing some hours of the afternoon 
at his office, and waiting with patience for the great healer, 



iBucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 77. 



THE STRICKEN OAK 243 

time, to put him on his feet again, a grave, sudden un- 
easiness interrupted his recovery. Previously, in February, 
he had the deep sorrow of losing his "sister Mattie" — his 
sister-in-law Martha whom he loved tenderly, the wife of his 
brother Jeff, the engineer; and in writing to his old mother, 
his sorrow for her death is seen to be deep. Who would have 
said that now, at this critical hour in which his own life was 
already broken, a second stroke, otherwise terrible, was pre- 
pared for him? 

His mother, who, in September, 1872, had left Brooklyn 
to live in New Jersey with her son George, whose business 
had prospered since the war, was approaching then her eigh- 
tieth year. She was suffering from rheumatism and, since 
the commencement of May, was feeling worse. Grave ap- 
prehension crossed Walt's mind. "Dear Mother; I am very 
uneasy about you — it is very afflicting to have the nervous 
system affected that makes you always discouraged, that is 
the worst — Mother I fear that you may be much worse than 
you say — I think of it night and day. . . ." 1 He pro- 
posed going to her, as soon as his strength would allow him; 
the first day of June he would be with her. The date was 
too distant, alas ! May 20th he was called to her bedside and 
left immediately, despite his condition. The 23rd his mother 
died. 

Words are weak to suggest the anguished hours which 
W r alt passed at the death bed of his mother who had been 
the great love of his life. The humble farm mistress of the 
Long Island village, the carpenter's companion, the fecimd 
mother, with magnificent heart to whom he proudly claimed 
himself indebted for his most intimate qualities, had been 
the most potent influence in his career and with her going 
was broken the strongest tie which bound him to a life long 
since painful and burdensome. Feeble as he was at that 
moment the emotion might prove fatal to him. Blow upon 
blow, he was struck to the heart of his physical life, then 

»Bucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 90. 



244 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORE 

to the heart of his heart. And the supreme, heartbreaking 
farewell shows itself in the strophe which, later, he dedicated 
to her: 

To memories of my mother, to the divine blending maternity, 

To her, buried and gone, yet buried not, gone not from me, 

I see again the calm benignant face fresh and beautiful still, 

I sit by the form in the coffin, 

I kiss and kiss convulsively again the sweet old lips, the cheeks, the closed 

eyes in the coffin, 
To her, the ideal woman, practical, spiritual, of all faith, life, love, to me 

the best, 
I grave a monumental line, before I go, amid these songs, 
And set a tombstone here. 1 



^Leaves of Grass, p. 376. 



PART SIX 
THE INVALID 

Camden (1873-1884) 



XX 

THROUGH ABANDONMENT AND SORROW 

Among human experiences there remained one which Walt 
Whitman had not yet sounded by living it: this of physical 
suffering and of sorrow. Nineteen years of invalidism, from 
the time he left Washington till his calm and sweet release, 
brought him this bitter completing of his education. To 
some the splendid physical man that they knew past his 
fiftieth year was still more beautiful while enduring with 
so much simple valour the trial of physical suffering. From 
the disabled body another aspect of the man emerged 
and developed, a Walt more intimate, who proved the con- 
tinuation and the crowning of the first, the Walt, alive and 
sauntering, so glorious in his triumphant health, now lost 
forever. 

If his physical downfall was irremediable, the sight of this 
shattered athlete who did not deny a syllable of what he had 
championed when brimming with vitality was perhaps worth 
these nineteen years of infirmity. When one sees him per- 
sist in flying from the great mast of his ship the pennant of 
confidence and optimism which he raised in middle fife, one 
better understands the real meaning of Walt Whitman. He, 
the invalid poet, was about to enter a period of supreme af- 
firmation and apotheosis. It is one of the great sages of 
modern times who, from a wretched corner of New Jersey, 
seems to beam on the world in all the brilliancy of his Olym- 
pian presence. 

For Walt has, unknown to himself, quitted Washington 
forever, and Camden, a workingman's suburb, separated 
from Philadelphia by the Delaware, one which no "poet" 
would have chosen to shelter his meditations, was the har- 

247 



248 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

bour where he was soon to anchor. The sudden death of his 
mother was a hard blow to his broken constitution. This 
almost simultaneous disappearance of the "two best and 
sweetest women whom he had ever seen and known, or ex- 
pected to see," above all that of the dear one to whom he 
was bound by the most intimate fibres, came at the very 
worst period of his illness. A few days after he tried, for 
change of air and escape from the heat, to reach the New 
Jersey coast but he broke down in Philadelphia and had to 
be brought to Camden, to his brother George. 

Months, lugubrious years opened then for the poet, weak 
and worn by prostration. He entered upon the only really 
wretched period of his life; its serene radiance was suddenly 
darkened. Oh, the sorrowful and heavy history of the in- 
terminable weeks of impotence and of deadly weakness! 
Subject to repeated attacks, his head in a whirl, moving 
about with extreme difficulty, passing sleepless nights, this 
great liver was being apprenticed to bodily torment. He 
occupied the second story of his brother's house, the room 
where his mother died, and watched the slow days pass, 
seated in her great mahogany arm chair, hearing from his 
open window the homesick roll of the trains which crossed 
fifty or sixty rods from his home. In the less weak inter- 
vals, when he felt the strength to move, he boarded a tram 
which passed the door, took the Delaware ferry and passed 
an hour at the Mercantile Library. True to his instinct he 
took no medicine and looked after his own diet. His ap- 
petite was good and he let nature work unaided. Toward 
the end of the summer his brother left 322 Stevens Street 
to live at 431 in the same street, a fine house which he had 
built, and Walt left the room where the gentle Louisa Van 
Velsor had died in the presence of her two sons, and followed 
his family in this removal. 

Throughout the heavy melancholy of the empty, inactive 
hours, although at times mortally, profoundly sad, he was 
somehow supported by an invincible and marvellous hope. 



THROUGH ABANDONMENT AND SORROW • 249 

Despair never touched the big-hearted solitary who was to 
draw for nineteen years inexhaustibly from the supply of 
stoic patience which nature had given him. Not once the 
shadow of a sacrilegious malediction or blame of life for its 
malign persecution, even at the height of his distress. He 
waits simply, compelling himself to put from him his black 
thoughts and to preserve his good temper. The heroic in- 
genuousness of these words which he threw in the face of 
his sorrow, as if to forbid its access to his intimate self! "I 
am feeling decidedly better these last 24 hours — guess I shall 
come out in the spring with the frogs and the lilacs — I keep 
a bully good heart, take it altogether." 1 

It was to his dear Washington friend, to Peter Doyle, 
that he wrote these words. Not only did he feel the bit- 
terness, howsoever cruel for a being of such abundant vitality 
thus cut off from the joy of the open air and the intoxica- 
tion of free rambles, he was hungry for tenderness and com- 
panionship, suffered keenly from loneliness. At Camden 
he was without a real friend and had scarcely a visitor. John 
Burroughs who had left Washington and was preparing to 
build his country house at Esopus, on the Hudson, came 
many times to comfort him with his dear presence. From 
time to time the mail carrier brought a letter from faithful 
Mrs. O'Connor, who proved herself outside the persistent 
and deplorable break between Whitman and her husband. 
But how insufficient these fugitively offered breaths of affec- 
tion for such a heart! It was this lack of congenial friend- 
ship which kept the atmosphere about his arm chair lugu- 
brious and heavy. Through Peter Doyle he reached his 
comrades occasionally; he could not, ill as he was, mingle 
with the crowd, his great friend, and make new acquain- 
tances. He who not long ago, in the hospitals, had reani- 
mated with the flowing radiance of his superb health 
thousands of sufferers, experienced in his turn the need of 



Walamus, p. 140. 



250 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

being invigourated by affectionate and communicative pres- 
ences, to be nursed and consoled like a little child. Despite 
all his courage and his good humour, the letters of the great 
solitary allow us to penetrate beneath the "nothing new" 
which he uses as a refrain, or by some more precise confes- 
sion, for instance, that "it is pretty glum around and over 
me sometimes"; 1 showing of what heavy hours his life was 
then woven. More than the days the "long cold evenings" 2 
weighed upon him, succeeding the joyous ones at Washing- 
ton, when he went with one or with a group for charming 
walks by moonlight. 

Certainly Walt did not want for anything in the house of 
his brother George and of his sister-in-law who proved at- 
tentive and generous to the invalid. But the atmosphere 
of the house was not what his lungs needed: the brotherhood 
of blood which united them was not seconded by that other 
brotherhood, which alone unites men, and makes of the most 
remote beings a true family. The Colonel who "believed 
in pipes but not in poems" 3 had never understood his brother, 
who once said of him, "We have the feeling of brothers one 
toward another; but George does not know me. It is pos- 
sible that I do not know George also." 4 At any rate Walt, 
who lacked nothing for material comfort, did not experience 
morally the feeling of home. He needed not only attention, 
he needed to be loved and understood: tenderness was to him 
like daily bread. He confided to Peter Doyle that the friendly 
presence and the magnetism needed are lacking here — "I come 
in close touch with no one. . . ." 5 He wrote again, at 
the time he was about to occupy the new house his brother 
had built: "I am truly well here, but my heart is blank and 
lonesome utterly." 6 What would he not have given to have 

Calamus, p. 107. 

Hd. t p. 189. 

«H. Traubel: With Walt Whitman in Camden, p. 227. 

*Camden Edition, Introduction, p. lxxxii. 

^Calamus, pp. 116-117. 

Hd., p. 118. 



THROUGH ABANDONMENT AND SORROW 251 

near him his dear son Peter, "his dear loving face and hand 
and voice." 1 "I think that if I had only the right quarters 
which I had in Washington, and a good wood fire, and you 
with me as often as possible, I would be comparatively 
happy. 2 " But that was a dream ; fate chained him to Camden. 

And then, he had one wound which did not heal. "Moth- 
er's death is still on my mind — time does not lift the cloud 
from me," he confessed two months after he had kissed her in 
the coffin. In August the same complaint escaped him: 
" I can put up with all but the death of my mother — that is 
my great sorrow which sticks — affects me as much now, or 
more, than at the time it happened. ... I cannot still 
get used to it — it is the great cloud of my life, nothing which 
happened till then had such an effect upon me." Despite 
all, his optimism breaks out and he continues: "But I shall 
get over it, however, dear son (that is likely of course, it is 
not sure), and I shall return to Washington this autumn and 
we shall be together again. I hope you will find me the 
same, as I was when you went with me to the Baltimore 
station on May 2. " 3 

He did not return to Washington that autumn nor the 
autumn following, nor the next, though the hope did not 
leave him till the summer of 1874. He remained titularly 
as employe in the department, the work being done by a 
substitute, paid by himself. But in July, 1874, he was re- 
lieved of his duties, after eighteen months' absence. 4 This 
time, it was the definite break with the old life and the 
beginning of his establishment in the labouring men's 
suburb where fate had stranded him. Then, in October, 
he wound up his business in Washington. 

He did not seem extraordinarily affected by the new 
orientation of his life whose future was from that time en- 
veloped in sombre uncertainty. He continued to live in 

Walamus, p. 132. 
*/<*., p. 129. 
*Id., p. 109. 
*Id., pp. 154-5. 



252 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

hope, "fortunately I have been stocked with a plentiful 
share of it." 1 Thus it was that he calmly accepted his 
situation. He waited. "Just one year ago to-day that I 
fell paralyzed, what a year it has been for me, " 2 he wrote in 
January, 1874. After long months, he knew himself doomed, 
that nothing better was to be expected; he then resignedly 
announced: "I had another violent attack to-day, but it 
will pass." Or better, "I have had a bad week enough but 
I still don't get flat. I am often thankful to be as well as I 
am." 3 O the excruciating and sinister breaking up of this 
physique, which was once as if cut from the same material as 
the cliffs and the forest ! The pride of being strong and with- 
out physical blemish crumbled bit by bit. 

The poor invalid remained resting in his arm chair, lost 
in his thoughts, with his dog Zip, his daily companion. He 
tried to work a little, when his painful head would permit. 
He began to collect his notes of the war and the hospitals; 
also a poem which he gave to the Graphic which honoured him 
with a very cordial article accompanied by a portrait. He 
was thus tying himself to life in revising his memories of a 
crowning epoch of it. He went out as often as he could for 
slow and short walks; it was then he began to be acquainted 
a little with the people who came his way, the ferrymen, the 
tram conductors and drivers, who were kind to the sick man. 
And this made a pretense of life; he was compelled in waiting 
for something better to deceive his hunger and to relieve his 
suffering. 

He was even then but half way on the downward road. In 
1875, the shadows still thickened about him. The preceding 
summer he wrote to Doyle: "It seems clear enough that there 
is no substantial recovery probable"; he admitted the possi- 
bility that he might not recover; he made a new will — left the 
large part of what he had to his feeble brother Ed, and the 

l Calamu8, p. 156. 
Hd., p. 141. 
*Id., p. 146. 



THROUGH ABANDONMENT AND SORROW 253 

rest to Doyle. "The time goes very tedious with me. . . . 
I get desperate at staying in — not a human soul for cheer, or 
sociability or fun, and this continued week after week, month 
after month." 1 This time the heroic sufferer seemed at his 
limit and breathed out the complaint of his heart stricken 
with loneliness. The great liver, the great seeker, the great 
lover, was in darkness, consumed by nostalgia, by the limit- 
less sadness of not being able to live more, to be joyous, to 
love, to be loved. Sometimes the bitterness so filled him 
that he had no courage to put together the order of a letter 
when he had to send a simple line to his friend at Washington, 
and at the close of the year 1875, heavier still than the two 
previous ones, he wrote: "I have been very sick indeed, the 
feeling of death and dizziness, my head swimming a great 
deal of the time, turning like a wheel — with much distress in 
the left side which sometimes keeps me awake at night. . . . 
I have not been out for three weeks." 2 

To this distress of the solitary, disturbances of another 
kind were presently added. The allowance which Walt paid 
to the Colonel was using up the little wage-savings he made 
at Washington. These were fast diminishing. This prospec- 
tive penury seemed to disturb him; what was he to do, inva- 
lid as he was and would probably be always? The possi- 
bility of dependence upon no matter whom was to him 
insupportable. He could count only on the meagre returns 
which the sale of Leaves of Grass was to bring him; he was ill 
and alone; his early death was assumed and the book agents 
in New York conducting the sale cheated him. Truly fate 
was filling his measure. And indeed who knows? The 
material failure of the book was perhaps the symbol and 
augur of its total failure as the bible of humanity, the gospel 
of the modern life. Despite his serene instinctive confidence 
how should Walt, depressed by suffering, his heart sick of 
loneliness, apparently forgotten by everyone, receiving no 



^Calamus, p. 159. 
*ld., p. 163. 



254 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

encouragement from without, not feel harrowed by lugubri- 
ous thought? It was truly from the depth of the sorrow of 
the titan chained on a Caucasus built of all his hardships 
that he wrote the poem — sent in March, 1874, to Harper's 
Magazine: The Prayer of Columbus, of Columbus come to the 
end of his voyages and venting his despair on the island 
where he was shipwrecked. " They tell me I have coloured it 
with thoughts of myself," writes the poet. "Very likely." 1 
The discoverer of the moral continents of the future, the 
Spiritual Columbus who had furrowed with a bold prow seas 
of unknown humanity, used the analogy which was evident 
between his present condition and that of the old Genoese 
sailor — both assaulted by adverse winds, both saturated 
with misery, suffering, calumny, and ingratitude — and effused 
by the lips of the explorer the sadness of his own soul. 

A batter'd wrecked old man, 

Thrown on this savage shore, far, far from home, 

Pent by the sea and dark rebellious brows, twelve dreary months, 

Sore, stiff with many toils, sicken'd and nigh to death, 

I take my way along the island's edge, 

Venting a heavy heart. 

I am too full of woe! 

Haply I may not live another day; 

I cannot rest O God, I cannot eat or drink or sleep, 

Till I put forth myself, my prayer, once more to Thee, 

Breathe, bathe myself once more in Thee, commune with Thee, 

Report myself once more to Thee. 



One effort more, my altar this bleak sand; 

That Thou O God my life hast lighted, 

With ray of light, steady, ineffable, vouchsafed of Thee, 

Light rare untellable, lighting the very light, 

Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages; 

For that O God, be it my latest word, here on my knees, 

Old, poor, and paralyzed, I thank Thee. 



l Calamus, p. 145. 



THROUGH ABANDONMENT AND SORROW 255 

My terminus near, 

The clouds already closing in upon ine, 

The voyage balked, the course disputed, lost, 

I yield my ships to Thee. 1 

The poet come to this extremity seemed journeying toward 
some fatal crisis which was smothering all the vigour left in 
him. But back of him legions of his race, from whom he had 
inherited a magnificent strength, invisibly sustained him in 
this terrible assault which was to be followed by many 
another; and it was decreed that he carry off the victory. The 
year 1876 was the beginning of a comparative recovery, slow, 
but sure. The most tragic moments were passed and the man 
insensibly began again to live in company with his infirmity. 

To this unexpected renascence of the year 1876 one event 
strongly contributed. In the interval of suffering he slowly 
prepared a new edition of his poems : was it not now the only 
form of activity or approximating it which tied him to life? 
He discovered at Camden a little printing office, where the 
young printers were kind and respectful to him, and he en- 
trusted them with the composing of his book, which he 
published himself. 2 Sometimes, remembering his first trade, 
he put his hand to the work. This edition elaborated in an 
unhappy time — the sixth and called the "Centenary edi- 
tion " (the year of the centennial) — appeared at the beginning 
of 1876. It consisted of two volumes: Leaves of Grass con- 
forms to the preceding edition, except some insertions, then a 
mixture of verse and prose entitled Two Rivulets, and includ- 
ing Democratic Vistas, Notes of the War, Passage to India, 
Like a Bird on Pinions Free, more than twenty new poems. 

The supplementary volume, later bound with his verse, 
and proportionately enlarged by new pages, was the point 
of departure of the Prose Works such as we know it to-day, 
destined to accompany, emend, elucidate, the master work. 
In a preface, the poet allows us to see a reflection of the 

^Leaves of Grass, pp. 323-324. 
'Calamus, p. 161. 



256 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

sombre epoch which he was passing through: "As I write 
these lines, May 31, 1875, it is again early summer — again my 
birthday, now my fifty-sixth. Amid the outside beauty and 
freshness, the sunlight and verdure of the delightful season. 
O how different the rural atmosphere amid which I now re- 
vise this Volume, from the jocund influence surrounding the 
growth and advent of Leaves of Grass." 1 Like a reaffirmation 
of pride and of youth and a recall of the beginning, the por- 
trait which formerly signed the first edition of the book- 
gospel, the portrait — singular, unforgettable, a moment 
pushed aside — took again its place, never to leave it, "facing 
the poem in which the man of Manhattan sang the joy of his 
body and his soul." 

The edition went on sale. Walt offered it for three dollars. 
Some copies were distributed to friends, to different journals, 
and to buyers of curios, as if he had produced something 
marvellous. At once a veritable flood of requests came from 
England, letters rich in admiration and commissions, con- 
taining whole lists of buyers. . . . Here is what had 
come to pass. Already the autumn before, W. M. Rossetti 
and Anne Gilchrist together found the way to buy in England 
a part of the edition which they already knew. 2 To the offer 
of material help Walt replied that although very poor he was 
not in absolute want, and that he was deeply cognizant of 
the generosity of transatlantic friends; he appreciated above 
all assistance under the form of the sale of his books. 3 When 
a review of the new edition appeared in the Daily News, 
Robert Buchanan immediately sent to that paper a retalia- 
tory letter in which he exposed the tragic situation of the 
poet ill and helpless, whom he compared to a dying eagle, set 
upon by ravens. 4 A little later W. M. Rossetti prepared 
and distributed a circular in which he asked the admirers of the 



^Complete Prose, p. 274 (Note). 
*H. H. Gilchrist: Anne Gilchrist, pp. 223-224. 
'Complete Prose, pp. 310-11. 
•LondonJDaily News, March 13, 1876. 



THROUGH ABANDONMENT AND SORROW 257 

poet to subscribe to his last volume. 1 And the response was 
cordial, prompt, unanimous; a select group of writers, artists, 
and intellectuals, clergymen, women of the aristocracy, high 
officials, were enrolled. Among a crowd of other famous ones 
there were Tennyson, Ruskin, Edward Carpenter, Edward 
Dowden, E. Gosse, G. Saintsbury, Hub. Herkomer, Madox 
Brown, Lord Houghton; and some subscribers sent twice, 
three times the price to offer more efficacious help to the old 
poet neglected by his own people. 

All summer manna fell in Camden. Walt wept with 
emotion. After the cruel time which he had lived through 
this sudden coming of generosity did him a world of good. 
He felt, in his heavy veins, a new vigour come to him and now 
he became the happiest man on earth. "I was . . . 
poor, in debt," he wrote later — "I was expecting death (the 
doctor put four chances out of five against me). . . . 
Both the cash and the emotional cheer were deep medicines. 
Those blessed gales from the British Isles probably (cer- 
tainly) saved me. That emotional, audacious, open-handed, 
friendly mouthed just-opportune English action, I say, 
plucked me like a brand from the burning, and gave me life 
again. ... I do not forget it and I shall never forget 
it." 2 He said again to a friend: "Always I shall love old 
England. She comes to me now and always, when I think 
of her, as a great soothing affection." 3 And the requests 
continued, though abated toward the end of the year, ad- 
dressed to England and Ireland. "It is very singular," the 
poet wrote to Peter Doyle, "how my books are in de- 
mand in Ireland." 4 He sold enough to meet the reduced 
need of his life. Walt was saved for a time. 

In noting how different was the welcome which his po- 
etical message received on both sides of the Atlantic, Walt 



Donaldson: Walt Whitman the Man, pp. 2G-29. 
^Complete Prose, pp. 519-520. 
»Bucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 372. 
^Calamus, p. 166. 



258 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

could remember the new proofs of sympathy which came to 
him from his compatriots. In an article which John Bur- 
roughs sent to Scribner's Magazine of September, 1873, the 
editor cut out everything which referred to the wicked 
author of Leaves of Grass. 1 And when one of his first English 
admirers — Lord Houghton — then in America, came to visit 
him in Stevens Street in 1875 he declared that in all the 
orthodox literary groups which he met he was dissuaded 
emphatically from this visit — the Camden solitary was un- 
worthy of it; Walt interpreted this ostracism in its true 
sense — as a flattering compliment. 2 The cutting appeal of 
Buchanan in the Daily News roused hot comments in the 
United States and wounded American conceit. Some 
journals of New York where Walt had a few of his most 
venomous enemies replied to the English accusation by 
covering him anew with sneering contempt the more when a 
handful of English aesthetes severely reproached America for 
leaving him helpless. The affair, all literary appreciation 
aside, was indeed noble, this treatment of a man sick and 
poor, who all his life had toiled! It was to such scrubs that 
the poet Joaquin Miller most passionately replied, in a 
lecture given in 1876 in Washington: 

Here in this proud capital, lived not long ago a great "soul; an old man 
and an old man full of honor, with a soul as great as Homer's. . . . 
Grand old Walt Whitman. Even today he has the air of a Titan! Do 
not tell me that a man has consecrated for nothing all his youth and all 
his years to the pursuit of art, supporting poverty in the face of disdain. 
That man shall live I tell you. 8 

Engrossed in their enormous material tasks, too young to 
be sensible to a beauty other than that prepared by the easy 
versifiers, after the known masters of the Old World, the com- 
patriots of W r alt Whitman did not possess the peculiar 
faculty of comprehending their great man; and not seeing in 

l Calamu9, p. 110. 

*H. Traubel: With Walt Whitman in Camden, pp. 31-33. 

»Buckc: Walt Whitman, p. 213. 



THROUGH ABANDONMENT AND SORROW 259 

themselves and on their soil material for poems, they refused 
to recognize the man sufficiently mad to aspire to create 
wholly an original art. He was so in advance of his time and 
his race that only fine minds, trained, foreseeing, such as 
England possessed, were capable of knowing and saluting 
him. It was the old old history proved once again. Walt 
addressed himself to his own people, offered them their own 
image, which was reflected, heroic and divine, in the mirror of 
his art, and his own people remained blind and deaf; and it 
was from abroad, from the old world of intellectualism, of 
tradition and prejudices, that applause came, decisive and 
vindicating. The poet himself never directed the least re- 
proach to his compatriots: "They owed him nothing: why 
would he present the note for wares which they had not asked 
for?" 1 

*H. Traubel: With Walt Whitman in Camden, p. 344. 



XXI 
THE NATURE BATH 

Other influences were soon at work to strengthen the 
happy effect of this event and to lead the invalid to a real 
convalescence. After these gloomy years of enforced con- 
finement Walt had an overmastering desire for the open air 
and the sun. And now that he was able to move about more 
freely he hastened to satisfy it. One day — it was the begin- 
ning of the summer of 1876 — he went to a suburb in New 
Jersey, twelve or fifteen miles from Camden. The place 
was called Whitehorse, and in the neighbourhood was an 
old farm, occupied by the Stafford family, whose son 
Harry worked in a printing shop in Camden. 1 

From the autumn of that year the poet began to spend 
weeks, months, seasons, boarding with the Staffords, who 
became his close friends; and when they left the Whitehorse 
farm, he went with them to their new home at Glendale 
where the Staffords kept a grocery at the crossroads. Walt, 
who since his arrival at Camden had had for horizon only 
the melancholy trees of Stevens Street, and who, during the 
preceding seven or eight years, had known but the suburbs 
of Camden, found himself in a delicious place, "with primi- 
tive solitudes, winding streams, recluse and woody banks, 
sweet feeding springs, and all the charm that birds, grass, 
wild flowers, rabbits and squirrels, old oaks, walnut trees, 
can bring." 2 The nature nook was to finish what the active 
sympathy of his English friends began. The old man, 
thanks to the sun, the water,;the trees, entered into a "semi- 
renewal of the lease of life" as he said. Timber Creek — 



ill. B. Binns: Life of Walt Whitman, p. 280. 
2 Complete Prose, p. 2 (Note). 

260 



THE NATURE BATH 261 

the little stream which wound not far from the Stafford farm 
— made of the helpless invalid a man merry, revivified, still 
able, despite his permanent infirmity, to enjoy life. 

Walt, at Timber Creek, spent all his time in the open air. 
He discovered a corner particularly wild; it was "a secluded 
little dell . . . originally a large dug-out marlpit; now 
abandoned, filled with bushes, trees, grass, a group of willows. 
i ... A spring of delicious water running right through 
the middle of it, with two or three little cascades." 1 There 
he established his private dwelling. Seated on a tree stump 
at the foot of a great oak among the mint, the cress, and 
the water iris, the sun sifting through the branches, Walt, a 
notebook on his knees, felt himself living in communion 
with luxuriant and wild vegetation, with insects, rustling 
leaves, the noisy little river, and wrote down his impressions. 
After the vicissitudes of his full life, the great liver saturated 
with humanity was face to face with mother nature which he 
had left, more than a half century, and he drank of it with 
delight. The old man heard, heard the divine music of 
eternity, the vibrant solitude, breathed the odours of the 
surrounding life, felt within him the pulse of the great pres- 
ent, prolonging the contact and his wonder. The invalid 
found himself at the fountain of all remedy and all comfort. 
"Away then, to loosen, to unstring the divine bow, so tense, 
so long. Away from curtain, carpet, sofa, book, from * so- 
ciety,' from city, house, street, and modern improvement 
| and luxuries — away to the primitive winding wooded creek, 
with its untrimmed bushes and turfy banks — away from liga- 
tures, tight boots, buttons, and the whole cast-iron civilized 
life. Away, thou soul . . . thee singly for me day and 
night at least returning to the naked source — life of all — to 
the breast of the great, silent, savage, all-acceptive Mother." 2 

Before the permanent miracle of air, sky, trees, insects, 
the heart of the solitary of Timber Creek was flooded with 

^Complete Prose, pp. 96-97. 
m., p. 77. 



262 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

joy. He saw in them a great unnamable Presence which 
sometimes fused with his own. "Never before," he writes 
in his notebook, "did I get so close to Nature; never be- 
fore did she come so close to me." 1 To regain a little supple- 
ness in his limbs he spent an hour sometimes "exercising 
arms, chest, my whole body, by a tough oak sapling — pulling 
and pushing, inspiring the good air. After I wrestle with 
the tree awhile, I can feel its young sap and virtue welling 
up out of the ground and tingling through me from crown 
to toe, like health's wine." 2 An Eden joy renewed the child 
after his suffering. 

In the glorious days of summer, in this Oegypan retreat, 
he celebrated a still more intimate communion with nature: 
"An hour or so after breakfast I wended my way down to the 
recess of the dell which I and certain thrushes, catbirds, etc., 
had all to ourselves. A light southwest wind was blowing 
through the tree-tops. It was just the place and time for 
my Adamic air-bath and flesh-brushing from head to foot 
. . . bathing in the clear water of the running brook 
. . . slow, negligent promenader on the turf up and down 
in the sun. As I walked slowly over the grass, the sun 
shone out enough to show the shadow moving with me. 
Somehow I seemed to get identity with each and every- 
thing around me, in its condition. ... It was too lazy, 
soothing, and joyous — equable to speculate about. Deli- 
ciousness, sane, calm, Nakedness in Nature! — ah, if poor, 
sick, prurient humanity in cities might really know you once 
more! Men would know what purity is and what faith 
or art or health really is." 

For years — till 1881 — Walt continued thus his retreats 
to his little river. He was able to write to Doyle in 1877 
that he was almost himself again — fat and red and tanned. 3 
Not only did the poet owe to these unforgettable hours at 



^Complete Prose, p. 97. 
Ud., p. 98. 
'Calamus, p. 169. 



THE NATURE BATH 263 

Timber Creek his resurrection but we also owe them a col- 
lection of impressions. Specimen Days, in which the emo- 
tion of Pan thrills with an intensity which sometimes sur- 
passes that of Thoreau — this collection Bucke describes 
truly as the "most luminous and vigorous invalid's journal" 
winch was ever written. These notes, pencilled out-of-doors 
in the little valley or in the surrounding wood by the con- 
valescing poet, are one of the gospels of life, and one of the 
purest testimonies of the communion of man with nature. 

Walt during the years when his strength was slowly re- 
turning lived with his brother George at Camden. It was 
there in July, 1877, that he received a call from an unknown 
admirer, from Maurice Bucke, a Canadian doctor of Ontario 
who became his close friend and his biographer, and is now 
numbered among the great companions, the equal of O'Con- 
nor and of Burroughs. His portrait of Whitman at this 
period proves Whitman still a magnetic figure : 

. . . Head and body were well and somewhat proudly 
carried. His ruddy face, his flowing, almost white, hair and 
beard, his spotless linen, his plain, fresh-looking gray gar- 
ments, exhaled an impalpable odour of purity. Almost the 
dominant initial feeling was : here is a man who is absolutely 
clean and sweet — and with this came upon me an impres- 
sion of the man's simply majesty, such as might be produced 
by an immense handsome tree, or a large, magnificent ani- 
mal. . . - 1 

It would seem that the desolate solitude of his early so- 
journ in Camden was dreamed away for Walt. The previ- 
ous winter a great joy came into his life: he saw face to face 
his dear friend, his soul-sister Anne Gilchrist, the noble 
advocate who pleaded with so much fervour the cause of 
Leaves of Grass in her open letters to Rossetti. She came 
for a stay of two or three years in America and settled with 
her children in Philadelphia, where one of her daughters 
studied medicine. There were then sunny hours for the 

^Calamus, p. 11. 



264 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

invalid near this rare woman; he passed a large part of 
his time with her, the time not spent at Timber Creek in 
the open air. Walt renewed an intimate comradeship 
which he had not had since he left Washington and he passed 
the winter in happy social conversation. Some echoes of 
these evenings come in Anne Gilchrist's letters to Rossetti: 

We are having delightful evenings this winter; how often do I wish you 
could make one in the circle round our tea table where sits on my right 
hand every evening but Sunday Walt Whitman. He has made great prog- 
ress in health and recovered powers of getting about during the year we 
have been here: nevertheless the lameness dragging instead of lifting the 
left leg continues; and this together with his white hair and beard give him 
a look of age curiously contradicted by his face, which has not only the 
ruddy freshness but the full rounded contours of youth, nowhere drawn 
or wrinkled or sunk. 1 

Some weeks before Bucke's first visit Edward Carpenter 
crossed the Atlantic for the purpose of seeing the poet, who 
received him presently at Camden. 2 The author of Towards 
Democracy has given us the impression which was made upon 
him by the old man whose all-powerful magnetism was not 
enfeebled by years nor illness; a something of immense re- 
serve in his personality. Like Bucke he made with Walt 
excursions to Philadelphia and like him noticed what real 
affectionate bonds united him to the people of the street, 
pedlers with baskets, porters, car conductors, who greeted 
him as they came from the ferry. An old Broadway 
driver who had not seen Walt for years grasped him by the 
hand, tears in his eyes, the expression of his joyful emotion 
on discovery of his old comrade. To his young, impression- 
able admirer Walt proved the living figure of his poems. 
The sweet presence of Anne Gilchrist, the warmth of her 
fireside, visits like Edward Carpenter's, such were the blessed 
good fortune which helped the invalid, strengthened by his 
frequent sojourns with nature, and thus were put definitely 
away the sombre hours which shrouded his life. 

iH. H. Gilchrist: Anne Gilchrist, p. 230. 

8 Ed. Carpenter: Days with Walt Whitman, p. 4. 



XXII 
ACROSS THE CONTINENT 

When Walt recovered his health he was seized with an 
ardent desire for movement, air, shows, new impressions — 
as if to be recompensed for the periods of impotence and con- 
finement which he had passed through. His infirmity per- 
mitting, he was resigned to drag his limb and to be no more 
than a damaged human machine, as valiant and happy as if 
he had still the superb health of old; he asserted his will to 
enjoy things to the full measure which fate granted him, 
and with a soul unshaken by bodily misery. It is an itiner- 
ant Walt whose tracks we are about to follow for this last 
big jaunt — then to return to roam no more. 

Before the continental journey was undertaken, a series 
of excursions from Camden and back again were made, one 
to Baltimore in 1875 to honour Poe whose monument was 
then erected; that year he also visited New York where 
he was "lionized"; he returned the next year and was present 
at Bryant's funeral; he sailed up the Hudson to visit John 
Burroughs; his love of New York was intense as ever. "In 
old age, lame and sick, having reflected for years on many 
a doubt and danger for this republic of ours — fully aware 
of all that can be said on the other side — I find in this visit 
to New York and the daily contact and rapport with its 
myriad people, in the scale of the ocean and tides, the best, 
the most effective medicine my soul has yet partaken — 
the grandest physical habitat and surroundings of land and 
water the globe affords — Manhattan Island and Brooklyn, 
which the future shall join in one city of superb democracy, 
amid superb surroundings." 1 

^Complete Prose, p. HI. 

265 



%6(> WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

These vacation habits grew upon Walt. The hospitality 
of the family of J. H. Johnston made him a home in the city; 
they lived opposite Central Park, and one of his favourite pas- 
times in the beautiful May afternoons was to sit in a Fifth 
Avenue stage watching the "Mississippi of horses and rich 
vehicles, by hundreds and thousands," a swift-moving 
procession. While the flow of carriages passed before the 
great lover of movement and of mass, he drew from a Park 
policeman comment on the American rich, "Lucky brokers, 
capitalists, contractors, grocers, successful political strikers, 
rich butchers, dry goods folks, etc.," exhibiting family crests 
on panels or horse trappings, suggestive of "soaps and es- 
sences" and a European garnish. Walt noted the com- 
ments of the policeman "as a doctor notes symptoms." He 
also watched the big liners leave for Europe, responding 
keenly to the crowds at the wharf. In quitting his dear 
New York his farewell words were: "More and more, the 
old name absorbs into me — Manhattan — the place en- 
circled by many swift tides and sparkling waters. How 
fit a name for America's great democratic island city. The 
word itself, how beautiful; how aboriginal; how it seems to 
rise with tall spires, glistening in sunshine, with such New 
World atmosphere, vistas and action." 1 Three months later, 
after an interval at Camden and the Staffords, Walt, leaning 
on his invalid cane, started on his way. His old vagabond 
heart yielded to a great enterprise; he now felt equal to it. 
The future he did not know: perhaps there would come 
a day of total helplessness. He would travel thousands and 
thousands of miles toward the West on a longer journey than 
any he had made in twenty-five years. The poet left to 
discover the almost limitless regions which he had so often 
explored in his dreams, he was to tread the soil, meet face 
to face the people he had introduced into his poems, and to 
come near, more freely than in 1848, the immensity of the 
continent, its riches, its incomparable diversity, its unity. 

1 Complete Prose, p. 507. 



ACROSS THE CONTINENT 267 

In mid-September (1879) he left Philadelphia and reached 
Pittsburg, black with the coal smoke of factories, crossed 
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and stopped but one night in St. 
Louis; he continued his journey to the West. "What a 
fierce weird pleasure to lie in my berth at night in the luxuri- 
ous palace-car, drawn by the mighty Baldwin . . . dis- 
tances joined like magic. . . . On we go rumbling and 
flashing, with our loud whinnies thrown out from time to 
time; or trumpet blasts, into the darkness. Passing the 
homes of men, the farms, barns, cattle — the silent villages. 
And the car itself, the sleeper, with curtains drawn and 
lights turned down — in the berths the sleepers — on, on, on, 
on, we fly like lightning through the night — how strangely 
sound and sweet they sleep!" 1 is his note of it. He crossed 
Missouri and admired its pastoral splendour, made a stop in 
Kansas at Lawrence, and at Topeka; crossed the Kansas 
plains and into Colorado. At Denver, the city of the Rocky 
Mountains, he rested, having encompassed three-fifths of the 
continent. 

There he was profoundly stirred. Denver and the gorges 
of Colorado intoxicated him with their marvels. He 
responded anew to the unspeakable magnificence of the 
scenery fulfilling and more than fulfilling his anticipations 
by its astonishing reality. Denver, a modern, busy city, 
between peaks and plains, immediately captivated him and 
for days he lingered in its beautiful streets breathing the 
pure air of the plateaus, and delighting in the streams of 
crystalline water from the mountains, visiting the smelting 
works where precious metals were piled in pyramids. He 
wished to end his days there. 

In an excursion to the Rocky Mountains before the wild 
panorama of rocks, streams, valleys, snowy summits, before 
such a marvellous Walhalla this thought struck him: "I 
have found the law of my own poems." He felt a "new 



Womplele Prose, pp. 132-133. 



268 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

sense," a new joy spring up in him. 1 He was not crushed by 
these marvels, he had on the contrary the sensation of being 
in his element, among realities adequate to his instinct. 

Denver was the limit of his journey. He went from there 
to Pueblo and on to Topeka; viewing plains of cactus and 
wild sage, and herds of cattle feeding. The prairies, oceanic 
levels of pasturage which occupied from north to south the 
middle part of the continent, were with Denver the most pro- 
found and most lasting impression of all his travels. 2 At 
Topeka he visited in prison thirty captured Indian chiefs. 
The assistants were surprised to seethe sullen, silent prisoners 
respond to Walt's greeting. "I suppose that they recognized 
the savage in me, something in touch with their own na- 
ture." 3 

He was again overtaken by prostration, and was detained 
three months at St. Louis with his brother Jeff and two 
nieces. He lost no time in exploring the queen city of the 
Mississippi, its resources, people, products, environment. 
He saw the giant slaughter houses, the large glass factories, 
or lingered in the evening by the great spinal river. As he 
expressed himself to reporters who came to interview him, he 
was discovering the real America of which eastern cities 
were but the advance guard, and his faith in the future of his 
nation was increased twofold now that he had touched for- 
midable realities which he had not till then been aware of. 
America to his mind was not yet conscious of the possibilities 
she concealed and one day surely a literature, poems, art, in- 
dividualities, an average such as the world never saw, would 
jet forth from the colossal reservoir of plains, rivers, moun- 
tains. Everything up to this time which had been done in 
poetry in America was unauthentic and false, not in accord 
with the immensity of her resources. The era of great Na- 
tives, truly modelled on their own soil, was not yet come. 
They would issue and spread, after the pioneers and builders, 

^Complete Prose, p. 136. 

Hd., pp. 132-140. 

'Bucke: In Re Walt Whitman, pp. 382-383. 



ACROSS THE CONTINENT 269 

to carry on and perfect the work of the creators of indispens- 
able material riches. 

Whitman returned to Camden the first days of January, 
1880, "in his average health and with strength and spirits 
good enough to be mighty thankful for, " as the Camden Post 
reported. This journey to the West, late in life, was a last 
and solemn justification of the great Idea which had illu- 
mined his life and which fertilized his work. "Prodigious 
marvels, revelations which I would not for my life have lost, " 
as he wrote to his great friend Anne Gilchrist. 1 This turn 
across the continent gave an edge to his appetite for pil- 
grimages, landscapes, people, and new places. Five months 
later he was in Ontario, Canada, the guest of his devoted 
friend Doctor Bucke who was head physician of an asylum 
for the insane. True to his literary instinct Walt kept a 
diary of his impressions of the asylum, the surroundings, re- 
joicing in the odour of hay, in the freedom of the prairies. 
With Doctor Bucke he made a slow exploration of east 
Canada, reached Toronto, and from there sailed on Lake 
Ontario and afterward the entire course of the St. Lawr- 
ence. He was alive to every suggestion of the ample, rich 
country revealed to him — faces, manners, scenery. Wild 
Saguenay above the mouth of the St. Lawrence was filled 
with a kind of "pagan sacredness." He marvelled at Canada 
as a land of waters, forests, snows, a land of happy men and 
women; not a privileged class only, but of the mass, great, 
healthy, happy. Later he thought Canada must become 
one with the United States. 

After his long journey the little adorable woody corner 
of Timber Creek saw him most faithfully return to it. The 
tiny valley where in contact with nature he recaptured 
enough of strength and suppleness to be allowed a long ab- 
sence, was to him like a fountain of health, to which he re- 
turned whenever he felt again the need to test the strength 
of his friends, water and trees. 



!She had returne<Tto England in 1878. Tr. 



270 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

Doctor Bucke was now gathering material for his great 
biography. This meant a return to New York where with 
Bucke the poet spent several days of July (1881) amid the 
scenes of his childhood. They were for him a time of deep 
emotion. It was more than forty years since he had seen his 
birthplace and the burial place of his ancestors; and now in 
his sixty-third year, after a life of sorrow and of joy, he re- 
visited the old Whitman farm lands, now for more than half 
a century in the possession of strangers, saw the well, the 
sloping kitchen garden, and the remains of the dwelling of his 
great-grandfather with its mighty timbers and low ceilings, 
and the Van Velsor farm, too, where as a lad he spent his va- 
cations. Seated on an old grave of the burial hill of the 
Whitmans for many generations, Walt thought of his family 
history — three centuries concentrating on that sterile acre — 
and reflected on all the links which bound him to them. 1 He 
had come from there, sprung from this soil and this primitive 
humanity, solid and sane. Then he visited Huntington 
where the Long Islander which he had founded still existed 
and where old friends came to shake hands with him. He 
felt again the poet's old love of the sea, its immensity, the 
solitude of the shores where he breathed again the salt breeze, 
heard the same waves, bathed and sunned, and shouted 
Homer as of old. In returning he remained till August in 
New York with the Johnstons; his old habit of absorbing 
shows led him to the Harlem River and Washington Heights; 
he went to Madison Square to breakfast with his friend Pf aff , 
where the bubbling diversions of the Bohemians happened 
before the war. The two men thinking of the old time emp- 
tied "in abstract silence, very leisurely, to the last drop" 2 a 
big glass of champagne, to the memory of the jolly compan- 
ions — all gone. Walt, that summer, passed again chapters 
of his life, lived again dear memories. 



i-Complete Prose, p. 4. 
2/d., p. 181. 



XXIII 
ANOTHER PERSECUTION 

Boston as well as New York was visited in 1881. Walt 
had been invited in April by the young men of Saint Botolph 
Circle to give his lecture on Lincoln. He read his commemo- 
rative pages, and recited Captain, My Captain. It was 
twenty years since he printed in Boston his third edition and 
he was unprepared for the reception given him by the cul- 
tivated audience which greeted him. There was something 
of poetic justice, too, in thinking of the reception of this man 
who had been scorned as a barbarian rhymester, whose burn- 
ing verse, surcharged with the future, had long fallen un- 
heeded upon the indifferent ears of his countrymen, and 
whose very presence now was felt as a benediction. "It 
was a scene which those present will long remember as preg- 
nant with meaning to the whole of their lives." Another 
paper said: "He has been welcomed at Boston with open 
arms. Old and young, old friends and new, have gathered 
around him. The young men have taken to him as one of 
themselves, as one of those fresh natures that are ever youth- 
ful, the older ones, many of whom might once have been in- 
disposed, now have grown to see the real core of the man in 
its soundness and sweetness and are equally hearty in their 
welcome. Tie is a grand old fellow' is everybody's ver- 
dict." 1 

Astonishing effect of the work of time, which must be pre- 
ciously recorded, in the joy of foreseeing an acceptation be- 
yond the limits of a club, a city, a country, and reaching 



iBucke: Walt Whitman, pp. 225-226. 

271 



m WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

round the world. . . It was then well in Walt Whitman 
to persist in his tenacious effort to maintain amid silence or 
hooting the affirmation of an infrangible personality, to be at 
last recognized by a public formerly hostile. Walt's ship was 
moving into serene places since the terrible howling storm 
which assaulted its first venture. . . . The horizon was 
becoming serene, and a soft breeze caressed the sail. Was 
it a treacherous indication or an advance taste of the future? 
No matter; in spite of possible future storms, the breeze was 
sweet and welcome, the ship was advancing, advancing. 

This visit was a prelude to an important event in the history 
of Leaves of Grass. Walt was preparing a new edition for 
1881 and his Boston friend Boyle O'Heilley told him that 
the publisher James R. Osgood asked to see the new text. 
Osgood and Whitman had met long ago at Pfaffs; the flatter- 
ing reception given to Walt from a public once hostile sug- 
gested to this publisher putting his name on the tumultuous 
book. 

Walt answered this proposal in asserting previously his 
inviolable intention of publishing a complete edition of his 
poems; he thus anticipated the fundamental objection al- 
ways provoked on the appearance of Leaves of Grass. Os- 
good decided to undertake the publication of it, and a corre- 
spondence followed in which point by point all the details 
relative to the make up of the book were determined. At 
last Leaves of Grass was to have a publisher. . . . Such 
fortune had fallen to the book but once in a quarter of 
a century — or rather partially, for the house had failed some 
months after the launching. "Up to the present," Walt 
could write, "the book in reality has never been published, 
all previous editions have been but reconnoitering, printed 
copies for enthusiastic friends." 1 

In discussing with his publisher the format, characters, 
make up, the poet with the minutia and niceness of an ex- 
perienced printer formulated his wishes — a compact volume 

^Camden Edition, VIII, pp. 276-286. 



ANOTHER PERSECUTION 273 

of about four hundred pages carefully printed on good pa- 
per — "solid, simple, not expensive, nothing fantastical." 
Details of profits of sales were agreed to, both in America 
and England. Osgood conceded everything in courtesy and 
good will. 

Walt corrected his text at Timber Creek. "I have three 
or four hours every day," he wrote, "in arranging, revising, 
fusing, in rewriting here and there passages of a new edition 
of Leaves of Grass, complete in one volume. I do a large 
part of the work in the woods. I like to subject my pieces 
to the test of negligent, free, primitive Nature — the sky, the 
stars, the sun, the abundant grass, or dead leaves (as now) 
under my feet, and the song of some cat-bird, wren, or thrush 
within hearing. . . . Such is the library, the study where 
(seated on a big log) I have sifted out and given some finish- 
ing touches to this edition!" 1 All haste was impossible to 
Walt. How many times, before sending forth his ship for 
the first time he had altered, re-shaped, verified the parts. 
And at each new voyage it was overhauled from keel to mast. 
Now it was ready once more. 

It was truly in a genial atmosphere that the invalid spent 
these months in Boston with the joy of summer and of the 
coming volume. When free from the printing house he went 
walking in Boston Common under the shady elms, where 
twenty years before he had had a memorable conference 
with Emerson; he went by tram to City Point, near the sea; 
he met the sculptor Bartlett, Joaquin Miller, and Boyle 
O'Reilley. But the richest memory of this visit was of some 
days passed at Concord. In September Frank Sanborn 
came to see Whitman in Boston, and invited him to Concord 
as his guest. At Sanborn's home Whitman met Emerson, 
Alcott and his daughter. The company discussed Thoreau, 
the various aspects of his life, while Walt studied Emerson 
who like himself listened rather than talked. He noted the 
"good colour in his face, eyes clear, with the well-known ex- 

x Diary in Canada, p. 58. 



274 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

pression of sweetness and the old, clear-peering aspect quite 
the same." 1 

Emerson invited Walt to dinner on the following Sunday. 
It was the first time that he saw Emerson in his own home. 
He was then seventy-eight years old; Walt studied for the 
last time that noble figure in an aureole of spiritual beauty. 
The occasion proved indeed memorable to the poet; to him 
this dinner, above all else, reiterated and sealed definitely the 
verdict of 1855. 2 W r alt was driven about Concord, taken to 
the old "Manse," the battle-field, saw the statue by French, 
and meditated a half hour in the impressive cemetery, 
Sleepy Hollow, where Hawthorne and Thoreau were buried, 
and where later Emerson's grave was also made. He visited 
Walden Pond, Thoreau's sylvan home. He, like others, 
carried a stone to the cairn raised by pilgrims, remembering 
how Thoreau twenty-six years ago came to see him at Brook- 
lyn. Concord gave a fine welcome to Whitman. 

A writer on the Boston Globe interviewed Walt one day 
while he was reading proof of Leaves of Grass: 

It is now twenty-six years since I began work upon the structure; and 
this edition will complete the design I had in mind when I began to write. 
The whole affair is like one of those old architectural edifices, some of 
which were hundreds of years building, and the designer of which has the 
whole idea in his mind from the first. . . . To a casual observer it 
looks in the course of its construction odd enough. Only after the whole 
is completed, one catches the idea which inspired the designer, in whose 
mind the relation of each part had existed all along. This is the way it 
has been with my book. It has been twenty-six years building. Seven 
different times have parts of the edifice been constructed — sometimes in 
Brooklyn, sometimes in Washington, sometimes in Boston, and at other 
places, — and this edition is the completed edifice. 

So many times did Walt believe he had given final form 
to his book that he must have been sceptical. He lived 
and his work lived with him, the substance of one passed 
into the substance of the other; he could not stop the growth 

Complete Prose, p. 182. 
Hd., p. 189. 



ANOTHER PERSECUTION 275 

of it, repress the mounting sap each returning season. And 
it is to be presumed that there was not to be a final edition 
while life lasted — triumphant proof that the book and the 
man were one. But the poet was right in saying that his 
structure was complete: the edition of 1881 is the book as 
we have it to-day, except the annexes of the ten years he was 
yet to live. This time the book was truly fused into one 
whole. One can see it unroll, vast and varied with its 
great spaces, its thickets, its glades, its mountains facing 
limitless perspectives, its rocks and plains, organically bound 
like a part of the planet. Walt was right, like a good work- 
man, to float the flag from the top of his great structure. 
After a quarter of a century he saw at last the sum of his 
work. Such was the significance of the volume put out by 
Osgood. Its appearance was ordinary enough; the poet 
wished no ornament on the cover but this naive emblem: a 
butterfly with spread wings poised on a hand. 

For the first days of the sale, a movement favourable to 
it was set on foot. Some friends of Whitman, the leading 
journals and reviews received their copy. This time the 
reviewers were not insulting as in former times. The pub- 
lisher wrote him on November 14th : " The book is going well." 
The house in England engaged in its sale cabled for another 
two hundred and fifty copies. For a book of its peculiar 
history, this could be considered a great success, and the 
winter sale promised a straight two thousand copies. Bad 
luck, after twenty-six years of struggle, seemed conquered 
this time. 

But . . . there was a "but." It was decreed perhaps 
that the book was not to prove its worth except by surmount- 
ing obstacles in proportion to its vast measure. A cruel 
law — though really just and beneficent — doomed it to in- 
cessant trials and at the limit of them it would succumb and 
be either unworthy to survive or else succeed forever. In 
March, 1882, Osgood received a note from the Procurer of 
the district of Boston, Oliver Stevens, demanding that he 



276 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

suppress the edition. What was to be done? The literary 
circles of Boston contained enough people intellectually keen 
and free to welcome, if not with unrestricted enthusiasm, at 
least with interest and deference, such a work as Leaves of 
Grass; and the warm welcome which surprised the poet the 
previous spring proved it. There was also a group in- 
censed as of old at the book. A society for the suppression 
of vice — the one which at the beginning of the century fur- 
iously attacked Thomas Paine's Age of Reason — a society, 
well entrenched, appealed to the Attorney-General of Mas- 
sachusetts, Marston, and he enjoined his subordinate, Oliver 
Stevens, to notify the publisher of this warning. Thus Harlan 
of sad memory seemed to revive in this second public attack 
against "the most extraordinary bit of wit and wisdom which 
America has yet produced," to quote the words of Emerson's 
greeting. As a result of the conflict Osgood returned to 
him the plates and the printed copies remained in the store- 
rooms. Both poet and author were satisfied with the trans- 
action. 

Thus Walt found himself again in the world with his book 
on his hands. So near to port, the contrary winds compelled 
him, once more, to turn back. Events seemed to prove 
these verses of the poet: 

I too. . . I also sing war, and a longer and greater one than any, -^ 
Waged in my book with varying fortune, with flight, advance and retreat, 

victory deferred and wavering, 
(Yet methinks certain, or as good as certain, at the last,) the field the 

world. 1 

Whitman's friends hastened to his defense. Douglas 
O'Connor, incapable of remaining long in the shadow while 
a cause dear to his heart was being fought, at once came to 
the rescue, with the same ardour of battle as in 1865. The 
good cavalier forgot the unhappy quarrel and in a flamboyant 
letter published in the New York Tribune he branded Os- 

^Leaves of Grass, pp. 9-10. 



ANOTHER PERSECUTION £77 

good-Mar ston-Stevens as he had branded Harlan. 1 Mau- 
rice Bucke, who was completing at this time the biographical 
essay, pleaded vigorously his cause in the Springfield Re- 
publican. The majority of the voices in the literary world 
was in favour of him. Later Osgood bitterly regretted the 
want of courage which made him submit to authority. He 
was severely censured and his cowardice produced a more 
serious moral damage than a law suit. He would have sold 
a hundred thousand copies in a month and no one to molest 
him. This was all very well; but in the meantime the book 
disappeared from sale, after some months in the market, and 
the inquisitors ostensibly triumphed. 

In the midst of these diverse clamours Walt preserved his 
confident placidity. However annoying, even disastrous 
(he was at the moment poorer than ever) the affair was for 
him, he displayed neither animosity nor discouragement, his 
eye fixed on the future, seeing perhaps the victory long deferred 
and uncertain perchance, "certain or nearly certain in the 
end." Was he not accustomed to storm? He saw his book 
andhis cause disputed on all the trifling grounds of public opin- 
ion and he declared with the phlegm of a true man: "If I 
have a cause, this has happened to help me. If I have no cause, 
this cannot harm me." And he retreated to Timber Creek. 

The good apostles in trying to suppress the sale and cir- 
culation of the great book of life only helped, by the 
marvellous justice of things, in propagating and spread- 
ing it. And the proof came suddenly, brilliant and retalia- 
tory. Walt transferred the plates of his book to a publishing 
house in Philadelphia, Rees, Welsh & Co., the predecessor 
of David McKay. In September a complete edition was 
immediately struck off. Three thousand copies were sold 
before the end of the year; and the sale continued, though 
lessened, the following year. The money was placed to 
Walt's account who since the sale of the edition of 1876 had 
scarcely any money. 

k ^ucke: Wall Whitman, pp. 150-152. 



278 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

Almost at the same time as this edition, known as the 
eighth, the poet entrusted the same house with a volume 
of prose which was to accompany Leaves of Grass and propa- 
gate the new aspect of his personality. In July, down in 
the New Jersey woods, he wrote in his notebook," If I 
do it at all I must delay no longer; the resolution came to me 
this day, this hour, (and what a day! what an hour just 
passing; the luxury of riant grass and of blowing breeze, with 
all the shows of sun and sky and perfect temperature, never 
before so filling my body and soul) — to go home, untie the 
bundle, reel out diary scraps, and memoranda, just as they 
are, larger or small, one after another into print pages, and 
let the melange's lackings and wants of connection take care 
of themselves. ... At any rate, I obey my happy hour's 
command, which seems curiously imperative. May be, if 
I don't do anything else, I shall send out the most wayward, 
spontaneous, fragmentary book ever printed." 1 The volume 
he called Specimen Days and Collect and is the same as the 
present edition not including November Boughs, which fol- 
lowed later — and he describes it as a huddle of diary jottings, 
war memoranda of 1862-65; nature notes of 1877-81 at 
Timber Creek, with Western and Canadian observations, 
and with these Democratic Vistas, different prefaces and 
articles published in review. Whitman also re-edited his 
early pieces in defense of abolition and temperance — this 
to prevent others from reissuing these crude and boyish 
pieces. 

The prose work had never a large sale, and was eclipsed 
by the master work which accompanied it. Incongruous 
and full of skips and jumps — hurry and crudeness telling the 
story better than fine work, these marginal notes of his life 
reveal him intimately, help us discover the what and why of 
his work, and make a magnificent unity of his thought and 
his effort. Not a line of Specimen Days but exhales the 
powerful aroma of his individuality. 

^Complete Prose, p. L 



XXIV 
DAWN OF GLORY 

These twin editions make a positive period in Whitman's 
history. In proportion as his structure kept rising, the 
circle of his readers slowly, very slowly grew. One by one, 
by successive starts, Walt saw people come to him. He 
imposed himself by the cool obstinacy of his will and now 
he was somebody in the family of universal poets, despite 
denials and repulses. It was not to the masses, however, 
that his prophetic words pertained: he saw them unaffected 
and obtuse, and they were to be so long after him. He won 
only individuals, but, it is true, the most noted individuals 
of his time. 

In 1878 his faithful friend John Burroughs, the first of his 
biographers, devoted some new pages to him in his book 
Birds and Poets: his study The Flight of the Eagle is one\ 
of the largest and truest of Whitman appreciations. The 
same year Robert Louis Stevenson published his Gospel 
according to Walt Whitman; 1 its irony and dilettantism 
concealed a real admiration which he dared not wholly 
confess. Edmund Clarence Stedman, in summarizing the 
work of the Poets of America, gave a large place to "Whitman, 
and his criticism in Scribner's Magazine in 1880 is masterful. 
At this time William Sloane Kennedy, a journalist in Phila- 
delphia, already a devout champion, published in the Cali- 
fornian his first praise of a revered work. The homage of 
Sidney Lanier must be also noticed who in a touching and 
beautiful letter declared to Whitman that though they were 
in absolute disagreement in their conception of art, he was 

*New Quarterly Review, October, 1878. Re-cdited in R. L. Stevenson: Familiar SUidies of Men 
and Books, p. 91. 

279 



280 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

one of his most fervent admirers. In all the great English 
reviews the personality of the man with the "barbaric yawp" 
was discussed; the conspiracy of silence was at an end. 
The Critic published his portrait with autograph verses in 
1883. Walt "accepted all this, as the river receives its 
affluents," naturally, without humility or pride, with a soul 
calm and serene. 

In England his place was steadily won since the burst 
of admiration in 1876, and a notable group regarded him 
as one of the great figures of the age. Between Tennyson 
especially and the singer of Democracy a deferent and sincere 
friendship was expressed in particularly cordial letters. 
Walt was fully alive to the high esteem of the poet laureate, 
though he felt a real aversion to his art, and this aversion 
he expressed — it was the time long ago when he first sent 
his ship afloat — in an anonymous article in which he pro- 
claimed in strong words the essential difference between the 
poetry of the Old World and the poetry he announced for 
the New. 1 Despite this instinctive antipathy he saw in 
Tennyson the representative of a society still half feudal 
and his lyrical expression of it the most finished and the 
most glorious; the affectionate, delicate, truly noble hom- 
age from the Lord of Haselmere to this solitary and haughty 
man who would not disturb himself for kings seemed to him 
a sign of the times; he saw in the greeting of the knighted 
poet, steeped in aristocratic traditions, a greeting, through 
him, to a man of the American people. To Doctor Bucke 
who visited Tennyson in 1891 (his letter of introduction 
being from Whitman), he said: "Whitman is a vast some- 
thing. I do not know what. But I honour him." 2 

An outstanding event of these years was the publication 
in the spring of 1883 of Walt Whitman by Maurice Bucke — 
the outgrowth of a profound knowledge of the man and his 
work, and of an* enthusiastic devotion to both. Burroughs 



iBucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 27. 
' [* Camden Edition, Introduction, p. Ixxii. 






DAWN OF GLORY 281 

previously — in the Notes of '67, completed in '71 — had but 
very slightly sketched the biography of his great comrade. 
This time the most exact facts, a chronological abridgement 
of Whitman's life, an investigation of his origin, documents, 
dates, closely establish the starting point and character 
of his work. Whitman, extremely solicitous to see himself 
written in the light of truth, not only helped in the task 
by procuring for his biographer facts and indispensable 
suggestions, but he himself at the request of Bucke prepared 
the first twenty-four pages of the book. 1 He did not have 
the repugnance the ordinary writer experiences of being the 
simple placer of his wares to be offered to the world in his 
own word — as he superabundantly proved in publishing con- 
tinuously anonymous articles on his work and his personality. 
And if he was almost indifferent to being lampooned by the 
press, it would have been supremely disagreeable to him to 
see his actual self denatured in the pages of a friend. From 
the standpoint of intimate veracity, the biography of Bucke 
remains the source, the classical epitome to which it will 
always be necessary to refer in order to evoke a living real 
Walt Whitman who by all the ample simplicity of his being 
reaches beyond the growth of commentaries which year 
by year are more vigorous and more detailed as to the in- 
wardness of his book and the contour of his life. All those 
who later inquired into the circumstances of his life or who 
discussed the depth of his personality he invariably sent to 
the pages of Bucke; and at the very last he vividly declared 
to his friends celebrating his last birthday: "A stack of books 
and essays has been devoted to me, and Doctor Bucke's is 
the only one which expounds and explains me as much as 
can be done." 2 The book was ornamented with two por- 
traits of the poet — one of which so distinguished had been 
engraved by Anne Gilchrist's son Herbert — the other of 
his parents, and with three engravings of Joseph Pennell 

x Ed. Carpenter: Days with Walt Whitman, pp. 36-37. 
*Bucke: In Re Walt Whitman, pp. 311-317. 



282 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

of the West Hills Farm and the two burial places of the 
Whitmans and the Van Velsors. Walt wished to appear in 
the midst of his own people, the Long Island farmers, and 
to look out on the verdure and sea of his island. O'Connor 
collaborated, for his famous pamphlet of 1865, The Good 
Gray Poet, reappeared in it entire, preceded by a long letter 
in which he renewed his old plea. 1 

Such as it was with its shortcomings and its uncouth 
composition this sincere book of Doctor Bucke's remains 
worthy of the poet whom it promulged on the world's stage 
as a definitively accomplished force. The book was con- 
tumiliously received by some of the leading magazines. 
Now among buyers of rare books, a first edition costs 
thirty dollars. Walt day by day gained ground. In for- 
eign lands his name continued to expand. Leaves of Grass 
was being translated into German, Russian, Italian, Danish. 
Walt was making himself a place — if not his place, which 
other centuries alone would accord him — and it was not 
in the power of any one to take it from him. The book 
had parted for the unknown and wonderful world journey 
which it is pursuing in these days. 

Walt became for the remainder of his life a resident 
of the little town opposite Philadelphia on the Delaware. 
Little by little the forbidding chill of the place which he 
felt when he sadly declared that he did not know a soul 
became pleasant and familiar, now that he walked leaning 
on his cane, in the neighbourhood of his house; just as in 
Chestnut Street his big high felt hat made his tall figure 
conspicuous in the crowd. Every day he came limping 
to breathe the air of the street and the river, and to in- 
hale the walking crowds, interested in sights and scenes, talk- 
ing with the passersby, quick to join in conversation, to 
hear news, to listen, rejoicing as in the days when he was 
freefooted, in the movement of the street and the public 

J See Lafcadio Ream's letter to O'Connor — a fine criticism of Leaves of Grass in Bliss Perry's Walt 
Whitman, pp. 239-244. See also Bucke's Walt Whitman, pp. 193-194, .for other authorities on 
Whitman. Tr. 



DAWN OF GLORY 283 

place. "How are you, Mr. Whitman?" was the greeting he 
met. And with his sweet smile, the old man replied: "Good 
day, good day, how are you?" 

Tram riding, beyond the great joy it always gave him, 
was now compulsory because of his lameness. His favourite 
drive was to go to the city by tram to the Market Street ferry. 
When he was equal to it, he mounted the front platform 
beside the driver who gave him his high stool; and there, 
his back against the bus and feet on the ledge, he went for 
miles and miles, absorbing the life of the street in a kind of 
silent contentment, of exaltation and of reverie. All along 
the route the singular old man of patriarchal appearance 
was now known as he was before in New York, and all loved 
him, without understanding the real "Mr. Whitman, the 
poet of Camden." 1 Walt was decidedly like the genius of 
the profession; in all the big cities he lived a secret sympathy 
always attracted him to it. It was during the winter of 
1880-1881, which was a severe one, that Mr. George W. 
Childs appointed Whitman to make known to him the con- 
ductors and drivers in Philadelphia who needed overcoats. 
Walt's work was to measure the fellow, who later received 
a garment to fit. Walt found this singular occupation easy. 2 

The Delaware River and the sights along its banks were 
to him a deep joy, intense as on the first day. It was some- 
thing of a substitute for the amplitude of the ocean he so 
insatiably enjoyed in New York. His artist eye, his instinct, 
supersensitive to all the emotion of nature and humanity, 
caught there all the delight in the strong, somewhat heavy, 
but harmonious, flight of the gulls on the water, the coming 
and going of steamboats, which he could name easily, the 
sail-boats when with all sails loose they passed amid sky 
and waters shining in the sun and appeared to him like a 
thing of indescribable beauty which no poet could put into 
words — the quays, the flocks of crows above the ice and 



»Donaldson: Walt Whitman the Man, pp. 39, 40, 42. 
*Id., p. 43. 



284 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

snow, the boats crashing through the ice, the lights on the 
shore and water, the high chimneys of the distant factory 
vomiting its flames in fantastic reflection, the moving poems 
of the heavens, the lovely moonlight nights, the splendid 
nights of winter and spring when he spent hours and hours, 
his soul intoxicated, looking at the stars whose names 
and position all his life he knew, the stars which he numbered 
with the silent adoration of a lover! Sometimes beneath 
the stars he felt under the spell of an enormous sweet emo- 
tion, such as this whose memory he fixed in his notebook: 

Venus, nearly down in the west, of a size and lustre as if trying to show 
herself. Seeming maternal orb — I take you again to myself. I am re- 
minded of that spring preceding Abraham Lincoln's murder, when I, 
restlessly haunting the Potomac banks, around Washington City, watched 
you, off there, aloof moody as myself; 

As we walk'd up and down in the dark blue so mystic, 

As we walk'd in silence the transparent shadowy night, 

As I saw you had something to tell, as you bent to me night after night, 

As you droop from the sky low down, as if to my side (while the other stars 

all look'd on) 
As we wander 'd together the solemn night. 1 

And the ferry, Camden ferry, after those of East River. . . 
Now he knew well all the environs and the ferry itself with 
its queer scenes — the waiting room, with its picturesque 
and changing crowds, women, farmers, workmen, children, 
its hum of conversation, laughter, the many scenes on deck. 
Lizzie the waiting room woman, Phil the newsboy, Charley 
the stove tender, and outside, vehicles, teams, rattle, cries, 
colour, bell ringing, steam whistles. 2 The joy of all this is 
described in Specimen Days. 

Sometimes when he felt the need of a change of air he went 
to Glendale to the Staffords, or to a cape of the Jersey Coast. 
It was at Cape May, listening to the voice of the waves, that 
he wrote the poem With Husky -Haughty Lips 0' Sea. De- 

Womplete Prose, p. 118. 
z Prose Works, pp. 124, 128. 



DAWN OF GLORY 285 

spite his illness he was cheerful. True he was always threat- 
ened with returns of his prostrations, but now he joyfully 
accepted his part, and despite his helpless leg and his con- 
strained life, he was active, convivial, interested in the life 
of the world. New friendships were knitted into his life; 
besides Maurice Bucke, Kennedy, and Robert Ingersoll, he 
met real affection from the family of Pearsall Smith. 

At this time, too, a young man who often passed Stevens 
Street made the acquaintance of the poet and used to talk to 
him. Later he wrote the recollection of Walt at that time: 
" . . . My nebulous impression then was of a large man, 
of generous nature, magnetic beyond speech. . . Al- 
though I was not ignorant of his books, nor was I inclined to 
underestimate their gravity, what he had written seemed 
dwarfed by the eminent quality of human attractiveness." 1 

This youth was Horace Traubel, soon to be in the first 
rank of friends and intimates of the poet during these last 
years given him still to hear reports of the world and to ab- 
sorb them joyously. 

iBucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 113. 



PART SEVEN 
THE SAGE OF CAMDEN 

Camden (1884-1888) 



XXV 

THE INVALID AT HOME 

For more than ten years Walt had been stranded in Cam- 
den "to die there," as he said, and during this time he had 
lived with his brother George. The Colonel had to leave 
Camden and Walt had to find a new home. The idea of 
having a "shanty" of his own often came into his mind. 
Now the cherished idea had to be carried out. He had never 
had a home of his own: at sixty -five it was time to enjoy this 
new experience. For about two thousand dollars he could 
buy a suitable house; and he found one not far from Stevens 
Street. George W. Childs, the benevolent millionaire, ad- 
vanced the sum, which the poet repaid little by little. One 
fine morning Walt found himself a property owner. 

The house he came to live in was close to the river in a 
rather prosaic and retired part of Camden, 328 Mickle Street. 
He settled there at the beginning of the spring of 1884, not to 
leave it till death. The rather wide street where he lived was 
lined with large trees; one grew opposite his windows, and 
the houses round about in the diversity of their fronts and 
their unequal height gave a somewhat provincial look to the 
street. The small two-story house itself the poet called his 
den. To some it gave the impression of the cabin of an old 
sailor. But Walt had chosen it and liked it and began now 
to organize anew his life there. Little by little a semblance 
of order was introduced. Mrs. Mary O. Davis became his 
housekeeper and a devoted one. Her presence always ani- 
mated the house and gave the old man the intimate impres- 
sion of home. 

It was in the little room on the lower floor that he passed 
his days. About him was heaped an arsenal of reviews, 



290 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

page proofs piled on chairs or spread on the floor. On the 
wall were portraits of his mother and father and a small 
canvas — brought two centuries before from Holland — a pic- 
ture of one of his maternal ancestors. Pictures of his friends 
were on the mantelpiece. Walt sat in his great arm chair 
before the open window, a book or writing pad on his 
knees. It was there that he worked and received his 
visitors. There were flowers in the window, and a canary in 
its cage sang sharp, joyous notes. Walt had his dog with 
him, but between the bird and the poet there was a special 
intimacy: its trace found its way into these verses of Leaves 
of Grass: 

Did we count great, O Soul, to penetrate the themes of mighty books 

Absorbing deep and full from thoughts, plays, speculations? 

But now from thee to me, my caged bird, to feel thy joyous warble, 

Filling the air, the lonesome room, the long afternoon, 

Is it not just as great, O Soul? 1 

While he worked or dreamed, the life of the quiet street 
was near: neighbours came and went, passersby stopped a 
moment before the window, and from his arm chair he replied 
gaily to their greeting and sometimes he conversed with 
them. And the old man, who had been at home in the great 
world, all at once experienced a special feeling of comfort. 
He had found a shelter suited to his years. 

His mode of living, according to the strong phrase of his 
friend O'Connor, was "the immemorial poverty of goodness 
and genius." The profits which he derived from his book, 
having received the royalties of two or three previous years, 
amounted to an insignificant sum. From time to time 
periodicals like Harper's Monthly, the Century Magazine, 
or the Critic, accepted a short poem or some pages of prose, 
and paid him generously. It was truly wonderful to receive 
fifty dollars for a piece of twenty-three lines or ten dollars 
for less than a quatrain; but this happened rarely, and these 
occasional windfalls were not sufficient for his maintenance. 

i Leavea of Grass, p. 380. 



THE INVALID AT HOME 291 

But the old man was not worried: he thought perhaps of 
the lily of the valley, and he was right. Throughout his life he 
had lavished succoring]aff ection and had sung the miracle of it; 
he published his Leaves of Grass to create ranks of Comrades. 
And now in his days of infirmity, noble hearts responded 
to the appeal, and were firmly determined not to let the Sage 
of Camden suffer. He had many rich friends in New York 
and Philadelphia. They formed an invisible guard, and 
watched over the little house to forbid the approach of 
poverty. 

Walt asked nothing himself. He left it to his friends to 
discreetly apprehend his needs. 1 Charity out and out he 
would have coldly refused. His dignity remained intact and 
supreme. His English friends sent sums of money from 
time to time. In a preface to an English edition of Specimen 
Bays he put on record his gratitude to the overseas' donors 
to whose generosity he was indebted for "very sustenance, 
clothing and shelter. And I would not go to the grave 
without briefly, but plainly, as I here do, acknowledging — 
may I not say even glorying in it? " 2 The Pall Mall Gazette 
in 1886 contributed a good sum to his support; Sylvester 
Baxter tried to obtain a pension for his work as "voluntary 
nurse" but he did not succeed. 

The settlement of the poet in Mickle Street was followed 
by another decline of his strength, already irreparably im- 
perilled. Whatever had been his past suffering he had still 
a heavy load to bear. In July, 1885, he suffered a sun stroke; 
he recovered from that to find himself weaker, and with a 
new disturbance of his tottering constitution. Walt slowly 
went down the fatal descent which the catastrophe of 1873 
pushed him. He lived in his thought and kept his optimism, 
in a serene waiting for what the future held for him. The 
great regret of the old man, since his isolation, was his in- 
capacity even to move with a cane. He had to give up his 

*W. S. Kennedy: Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, pp. 22-23. 
^Complete Prose, pp. 433-434. 



292 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

favourite promenades to the ferry, the river, to Market Street, 
to mingle with the crowds and, what was hardest of all, to 
pass long days anchored in his arm chair. To remain like 
an old ship high and dry, while he heard the currents of life 
move, and their odour come in whiffs, unable even to moisten 
the keel, it was indeed hard. The clearer his head remained 
the more perfectly conscious was the invalid of his corporal 
lethargy. His friends, who found him in his great chair, 
silent and thoughtful at moments, but never breathing a 
murmur against fate, understood all the same the immense, 
unspoken desolation which his courage and even his joviality 
concealed. 

Again his good friends planned to restore the great recluse 
to the open air. They bought a horse and buggy for him and 
he was able to go jaunting again, sometimes alone, some- 
times with his little friend Bill Duckett. This gift of his 
friends replaced in a way his vacillating legs, and enabled 
him to take delicious drives through the woods and by the 
river, sometimes in Philadelphia. It is to John Burroughs 
again, who came every year to spend a little time with his old 
friend, that we owe the picture of one of these drives which 
they made together in 1887: "Bye and bye Walt had his 
horse hitched up, and we started for Glendale to see young 
Gilchrist, the artist. A fine drive through a level farming 
and truck gardening country. We drove briskly and sa- 
luted every person we met. . . . Walt knew the his- 
tory of many prominent houses on the road. . . . 1 " And 
indeed the beautiful drives would end some day, even before 
the final day, as the fine walks had ended. . . . But 
awaiting them was a benediction. 

Once more, it was a new aspect which Walt's life took on 
in this retreat in Mickle Street. It was not the fact perhaps 
of his living in a little house which is so characteristic of this 
period as the semi-claustration to which his diminished 
strength condemned him. Despite the buggy and its pleas- 

JJohn Burroughs: Whitman, p. 54. 



THE INVALID AT HOME 293 

ure his life was concentrated more and more about the arm 
chair in which, without collapsing, his great body stagnated; 
and to this new phase corresponded a special development 
of his intimate being. He was deprived of expanding in 
space, and he deepened within hiniseK, dreamed with an in- 
tensified soul, prolonged his meditation in which he reviewed, 
as if to give them a final retouch, the great themes of his life 
and of all life. He became filled with thoughts of eternity; 
a new expression lit up his face; the circles of his psychic life 
were enlarged. In short, the atmosphere about him com- 
pletely changed. Whereas the greater part of his time 
heretofore was spent among his friends of the populace, the 
nameless workmen of the street, and of the shop, the 
people he was now in contact with — and how much he may 
have regretted it perhaps — were for the most part intellect- 
uals. In this new setting there rises an incomparably great, 
majestic, and simple figure of the seer, the patriarch, the 
sage and the old man of young heart, free from the rancor 
distilled by old age, an extraordinary figure, calm, silent, 
solitary, radiant, immeasurable, who lit up the room in 
Mickle Street and as such he remained to be forever mate- 
rialized in admirable portraits which are equivalent to sur- 
pass works of art. 1 The Titan stricken in his body, but in full 
possession of his intellectual faculties, thinks leisurely in his 
home, allows his thought to voyage through space and on the 
track of conjectures; judges, concludes, reexamines the mean- 
ing of his work, and renews in the ardour of his imagination the 
innumerable journeys of the man intoxicated with health that 
he once was. . . . 

How sweet the silent backward tracings ! 

The wanderings as in dreams — the meditation of old times resumed — 
their loves, joys, persons, voyages. 2 



J See the Critic, October, 1902, p. 319, and the Century, November, 1905, p. 82. 
^Leaves of Grass, p. 387, 



XXVI 

THE SOUL OF WALT 

When Walt, in answer to Maurice Bucke's invitation, 
went to Canada in 1880, the latter profited by this leisure to 
study complacently the physical and moral aspects of the 
poet, that he might the better write his biography. Among 
the notations accruing from these weeks of intimacy there 
are precious ones, which can give us a theme of a comple- 
mental examination of this great disconcerting figure who 
escapes you just as you think you grasp him, and by im- 
ponderable attributes escapes all analysis. Walt was more 
than sixty, and some new characteristics or rather those more 
apparent than before were written on his countenance. 
Paralysis and his confined life without changing the con- 
tinuity of his essential self subtly influence the further de- 
velopment of his individuality. 

Curiously the face of the poet retained the same brilliant 
ruddiness as when he sauntered every day along Broadway; 
and with hair and beard now white as snow, the contrast 
was very striking. His cheeks were still smooth and full, 
his lips, under the cover of the heavy moustache, full and 
strong as ever; and the heavy-lidded eyes had an expression 
of repose and drowsiness without lassitude. It was the 
fleecy aureole which lit up his face, and his trailing limb at 
first view gave him the appearance of an old man of eighty; 
yet when scrutinized closely, he had the look of childlike 
frankness. " His face is the noblest I ever have seen," said 
Bucke. 

Already in 1878, John Burroughs confirmed his first im- 
pression in declaring: "After the test of time nothing goes 
home like the test of actual intimacy, and to tell me that 

294 



THE SOUL OF WALT 295 

Whitman is not a large, fine, fresh, magnetic personality, 
making you love him, and want always to be with him, were 
to tell me that my whole past life is a deception, and all 
the perception of my impressions a fraud. I have studied 
hirn as I have studied the birds, and have found that the 
nearer I got to him the more I saw. . . . His face 
exhibits a rare combination of harmony and sweetness with 
strength — strength like the vaults and piers of the Roman 
architecture. He does not make the impression of the 
scholar or artist or litterateur, but such as you would imagine 
the antique heroes to make, that of a sweet, receptive, per- 
fectly normal, catholic man, with beyond that, a look about 
him that is best suggested by the word elemental or cosmic. 
It was this, doubtless, that led Thoreau to write after an 
hour's interview: 'that he suggested something a little more 
than human."' 1 Likewise, in spite of his age, his precarious 
life and his illness, Walt always manifested the same scrupu- 
lous neatness as in health : his clothes, worn or torn, his total 
personality, physical and moral, exhaled an exquisite per- 
fume of purity. He spoke without gesture or vocal em- 
phasis. He avoided arguments, preferring to all constructive 
reasoning and elaborate logic the simplicity of acceptance, 
praise, persuasion. His old curiosity he retained, making 
him an "intense listener." 

Years of illness, the apparent monstrousness of the stroke 
which smote him, the passionate attacks, even poverty, did 
not fill him with acrimony, disenchantment or rancour. 
" WTien I first knew Walt Whitman," writes Maurice Bucke, 
"I used to think that he watched himself and did not al- 
low his tongue to give expression of a feeling of fretfulness, 
antipathy, complaint, and remonstrance. After long obser- 
vation, however, and talking to others who had known him 
many years, I satisfied myself that such absence or uncon- 
sciousness was entirely real." 

He was punished bodily and in his poetical work, yet he 

^ohn Burroughs: Birds and Poets, pp. 215-216. 



296 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

preserved a soul as clear as if fortune had sprinkled flowers 
uniformly in his path. This optimism was not the effect of 
a heroic will, but as an attribute natural and inevitable, per- 
haps the result of an interior life in perfect equilibrium. He 
had made the complete round of things and avowed himself 
neither morose nor blase. His obstinate good humour was 
stronger than disaster, his composure marvellous. Interior 
emotions were never reflected on his physiognomy of the 
"unaffected animal." At certain moments, we are told, his 
face, nearly always lighted by benevolence, appeared im- 
printed with august seriousness, and then, "there was an 
air of power spread over it which made one almost tremble." 

With the advancing years, his simplicity of manners, 
his habits and tastes, which had always been remarkable, 
were accentuated. Perhaps no one ever saw, to such a degree, 
a human being so purely himself, nothing but himself, im- 
perturbably and simply himself, without foreign alloy, as a 
mountain, a tree, or an animal, Walt Whitman was in this 
respect a veritable prodigy of ease and naturalness. He was 
astonished to be so little astonished. He was invariably the 
same man, everywhere and with everybody. Walt was 
simple, and this simplicity was not an attitude, but the at- 
testing of the fundamental ingenuousness which was allied 
in him with the highest genius. 

He said one day to his friend, Anne Gilchrist, that none of 
his friends knew that he was a poet. No prestige had the 
power to affect him. It was this absolute independence of 
manner, of taste, of attitude, this obstinate and tranquil in- 
submission to the artificialities of social convention, which 
all his life made him as much the butt of waggish jokes as 
his invariable open collar, his ruddy cheek surrounded by 
white billows of hair and beard, his ample clothes of a by- 
gone age, his giant proportions, and the very particular joy- 
ous atmosphere which enveloped his entire person. With 
the same tranquil front with which he received praise or 
blame for his work, Walt let pass the jests, the caricatures, 



THE SOUL OF WALT 297 

parodies, malign insinuations, and continued in the same 
way — perhaps amused really. He proved, with his naivete 
and his slowness, the ideal target for the shafts of men of wit, 
he who had so little. 

In 1884, Edward Carpenter, who came again to see his 
friend, found him the same man as in his preceding visit, 
though weaker and perhaps slightly reduced; and in studying 
the august features of the old "Northman, enchained on his 
throne," he was more strongly impressed than ever with the 
singular extremes indicated in his face. He discovered in 
him the irreducible stubbornness, mingled with an intense 
thirst for affection and a universal tolerance, with an exces- 
sive prudence and calculation blended with candour, and al- 
ways the same indomitable savagery of the old falcon, neigh- 
bouring with the infinite, the all-enveloping tenderness which 
made the base of his character. 1 

Walt Whitman, in fact, offers multiple astonishment by 
the riches of contrasts of which the unity of his character is 
woven. He encompasses a world of opposites: as soon as 
you seize and fix his essential traits, other characteristics 
at least equally important immediately solicit you. And 
one hesitates to translate him, thinking that, at best, he will 
escape you, that he has neither commencement nor end, 
that he is not one to be grasped. 

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean. . . . 
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, 
Missing me one place search another, 
I stop somewhere waiting for you. 2 

The union in him of the complementary characteristics of 
the Whitmans and the Van Velsors does not explain the 
enigma he offers us; it is perhaps for the future to grasp fully 
such a type of complete man. Among so many strong ex- 
tremes the most striking is revealed when studying Walt 

!Ed. Carpenter: Days with Walt Whitman, pp. Sfi-88. 
^Leaves of Grass, p. 79. 



298 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

in his daily life; you discover that he is alternately close to 
the common run of men, to the verge of being one of them, 
and formidably isolated by his superhuman proportions. 
This contrast is not revolved in naming him a kind of arche- 
type of the average man, and nevertheless part of the ex- 
planation is suggested by that. "I imagined," he confided 
one day to Bucke, "a life which should be that of the com- 
mon man in average circumstances, and nevertheless great, 
heroic." The "average" with him was not the equivalent 
of "mediocre," but the state even of the "sublime": a per- 
fect democrat — not of attitude or of word, but of daily prac- 
tice — he balances the qualities of the mass, his share being 
largely the inappreciable intellectual faculties which be- 
longed to him individually: he included all the attributes of 
daily humanity, and besides, that "great something," pres- 
ence of which Thoreau and Tennyson respected without 
being able to define, and which was not what one commonly 
calls genius. Nature did not make him expiate the superior- 
ity he was endowed with, in marking him, as so many very 
great men, with what may be called bizarre inaptitudes, de- 
fects vis a vis of the average man; but prodigiously generous 
to him, she placed him as high as the highest peaks, and in- 
stead of the snow and the bare rocks corresponding to his 
altitude, he preserved all along the sides the vegetation of 
the warm, shady valleys sprinkled by farms and by har- 
vesters. It is thus that Walt Whitman is a new type of 
humanity, a product sui generis sprung from the soil and from 
the Democracy of the New World. 

How explain that the least vain of men, the most indiffer- 
ent to criticism and opinion, was the same man who, all 
his life, edited and circulated in friendly papers articles and 
notes in which not only his cause, but his character, was de- 
fended, his history and doings, his intentions complacently 
described? Walt, who never catered to a great man and who 
when questioned as to his work, spoke of his "pomes" or his 
"pieces" with such real simplicity denying them all sublime 



THE SOUL OF WALT 299 

intention and considering them only as efforts of new poetry, 
declared, however, to Bucke that not one of his most enthu- 
siastic admirers such as O'Connor or Burroughs valued 
Leaves of Grass as much as he himself did. For his cause 
remained constantly in his eyes the great cause; and his 
physical and moral being were identical with his cause. All 
his life he was seen exposed to erroneous interpretations, and 
he published these notes on himself to reestablish things 
finally right. He wished to be painted in the light of truth. 
The marvel was that this great, calm pride and this enormous 
conception of his personality, this limitless faith in his destiny 
permitted him to maintain himself in his daily associations 
with ordinary people, the most ordinary among them, not 
on the surface, but intimately — yes, the most common and 
the most natural of the sons of earth. 

And in proportion as you encompass him, the contrasts 
multiply, overwhelm you. Close to his natural freedom 
and his communal fervour was a strong tendency not to 
open the folds of his intimate being. This natural reserve 
could indeed, with a man so closely related to nature, be as- 
cribed to the innate prudence of the animal. Or rather, the 
sentiment of his dignity, which was strong, forbade him to 
deliver the key of an inaccessible sanctuary. You might 
see at once the same individual who joyously welcomed the 
victories of science and the application of the modern spirit, 
keep exclusively for his own use the most primitive things, 
the good strong things blessed by time: his sheet-iron stove 
and old utensils a provincial grandmother would not have 
tolerated. You might hear the inveterate dawdler, who al- 
ways declared a magisterial disdain of money, glorify the 
spirit of business, the industrial and mercantile activity of 
his race, as one of the necessary and splendid qualities of 
humanity. He wrote ^Democratic Vistas: " I perceive clearly 
that the extreme business energy and this almost maniacal 
appetite for wealth in the United States are part of ameliora- 
tion and progress, indispensably needed to prepare the very 



300 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

results I demand. My theory includes riches and the getting 
of riches, and the amplest products, power, activity, inven- 
tions, movements." 1 And elsewhere in a note found among 
his manuscripts: "In modern times the new word Business 
has been brought to the front and now dominates individuals 
and nations (always of account in all ages, but never before 
confessedly leading the rest as in our nineteenth century) ; 
Business — not the mere sordid, prodding, muck-and-money- 
raking mania, but an immense and noble attribute of man, the 
occupation of nations and individuals (without which is no 
happiness), the progress of the masses, the tie and inter- 
change of all the peoples of the earth. Ruthless war and 
arrogant dominion-conquest were the ideals of the antique 
and mediaeval hero; Business shall be, nay is, the word of the 
modern hero." 2 

Walt had boldly addressed the individual above the law 
as the sole authentic sovereign of the earth, exalted the out- 
law, the rebel, the criminal, and from the same heart he dedi- 
cated a little poem to Queen Victoria and another to old 
Emperor William I: and he said of presidents to someone 
who spoke to him of Cleveland: "He has read my Leaves, 
someone says, and did not think ill of them. I like to know 
all about the Presidents. They stand for a good deal, to my 
thinking. I've a fondness for their messages. ... I 
have a hope that they'll run their administration as they run 
banks. Why not? I don't wish to debase the office, nor 
abolish it as Moncure Conway says he does. No, no; the 
President is the one man representing every inch of the Re- 
public. He's worth keeping if only as a figure-head of our 
national democracy, the solidarity of the nation. So say I, 
at any rate, and stick to it." 3 

It is easy to see that Walt was not a simple renegate nor an 
irresponsible: despite the singular radicalism of his poem, he 

^Complete Prose, p. 215 (Note). 
% J)iary in Canada, pp. 72-77. 

3 Bucke: In Re Walt Whitman, pp. 367-369. See Whitman's poem, "Election Day, " Leaves of Grass, 
p. 391. Tr. 



THE SOUL OF WALT 301 

was not in reality more revolutionary than he was conserva- 
tive. Never did this impassioned lover of the modern, this 
mad.exalter of young America, which he adjured to be only 
itself and to reject models from beyond the sea — omit among 
his Adamic intoxication of singing a new continent, to send a 
memory to the past, and the masters of long ago. Through- 
out his work this pious sentiment is inscribed among wonder 
and prophecies; and at the last banquet with his friends, his 
first word was a homage to "powerful comrades" which had 
gone before. He finely adjusted the scales to evaluate the 
part of the past which entered into the formation of the fu- 
ture and to know with marvellous foresight the secret of their 
harmony. 

How often has the poet been reproached with the grossness 
and vulgarity of his instincts. How many times apparent 
inelegance was declared unworthy of a poet or an artist? It 
is true he was a man of strong, common instincts, but none 
who knew him well would doubt the extreme finesse of his 
taste. Miss Helen Price has recounted an instance of his 
delicate sense of colour in fruit, of motion in fishes; and others 
of his sense of religious exaltation in the presence of the great 
truths of nature. 

It is easy to say, too, that Whitman did not have a rational 
and deductive brain and that his purely intellectual faculties 
were not reascendant: there is some truth in this, but what 
is to be made of the extraordinary acuteness of vision, of the 
talent of master analyst which is evident in certain pages of 
Democratic Vistas in which he bares the vices, defects, cancers, 
the monstrosities of American society, or better still the ana- 
lytic criticism of Carlyle and Emerson? It was rarely that 
he employed his critical sense; nevertheless, he could always 
formulate definite truths without flourish. 1 

And such are the contradictions which the man presents 
no matter from which side he is viewed. He has to be ac- 

1 Whitman is an admirable critic: his book talks are among the best of their kind and are found in his 
prose works, and in Traubel's With Wall Whitman in Camden; Burroughs thought him the best critic in 
America. Tr. 



302 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

cepted thus. He does not explain himself: he is exposed, 
with his antinomies, his sudden breaks, his incoherences. 
He was aware of them and in recognizing them as neither 
proud nor humble. Like life, like nature, and like truth, 
he was made of contradictions, which of themselves resolve 
into a superior equilibrium. For if there was one thing in 
him which was to be trusted, it was the perfect poise of his 
character; and because of this the monumental impression 
felt in his presence was accounted for. He was the living 
confirmation of the truths which are tried and not proved. 

What silences all the doubts and what is proved from all 
questions is the sovereign grandeur with which the old man 
is clothed helpless in his arm chair in which his massive and 
haughty figure seems to defy decay. He had said : 

I announce myriads of youths, beautiful, gigantic, sweet-blooded 

and he had himself been one of them. But he also said: 

I announce a race of splendid and savage old men. 1 

And this also he saw illustrated in himself. After all, 
it was enough to look at him, to grasp his hand, to hear 
him say words of welcome, to have the most satisfying ex- 
planation of his work and of himself. By his physical pro- 
portions the massive amplitude and absolute symmetry 
of his figure, the colour of his skin, the timber of his voice, 
his manner, Walt Whitman appeared a true prodigy of 
harmony in power. This son of farmers, this artisan 
seemed as far from current humanity as the latter is from 
the primates. In a group of superior men, his natural supe- 
riority was proclaimed without his saying a word. Surely 
he had never been so beautiful since the time when old age 
and illness had transmuted into august majesty the manly 
strength of his years of health. The young barbaric god 
was little by little transformed into a majestic being which 

^Leaves' of Grass, "So Long." p. 881. 



THE SOUL OF WALT 303 

from the little house in Mickle Street lit up the world 
or began again his voyages of long ago among men and 
scenes. He does not diminish so much as we grow to 
his stature. A visitor, in 1877, after an interview with 
the poet, recorded his impression of him as: "the most 
human being which I have ever met." O'Connor already 
has given a particularly happy expression of his friend: 
"To call a man like him good seems an impertinence. 
In our sweet country phrase, he is one of God's men." And 
John Burroughs thought him a new type of humanity, pre- 
cursor of an age when the individual, after having passed 
the crucible of future democracies, shall blend in equilibrium 
the fundamental qualities of the antique man, and the spirit 
of enterprise and research, the sensibility of the modern 
man. 

Walt Whitman to those who knew him best is described 
as Oceanic, Adamic, Cosmic; he suggests that vast repose, 
that divine monotony of the tides and of eternity, felt in 
the foundations of his character, more akin to water, soil, 
wind, rocks, than is permitted man to be, all in his being 
affirmed supremely man. From his immense serenity a 
perpetual incantation of Erda pronouncing before the Voy- 
ager the words of earth, seems to rise, sweet and strong, all 
enveloping, drawing you toward the circles of the great 
All. . . . 

Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, 
Old age, flowing free with the delicious near by freedom of death. 1 



l Leaves of Grass, p. 126. 



XXVII 
DAYS IN THE COTTAGE 

Walt now worked two or three hours a day, by fits and 
starts. When he was active, he always wrote the motifs 
of his poems in the open air, among concrete realities. This 
source was now almost cut off from him. Inspiration also 
came at long intervals and was generally brief. The period of 
the out-of-doors was at an end since the old man was se- 
questered. He busied himself in collecting from his notes 
the impressions of his former life, evolving his conclusions, 
glancing backward over travelled roads. Despite the chary 
benevolence of the literary world toward him, some reviews 
and journals welcomed his verses or bits of prose which he 
sent from time to time. The Nineteenth Century published 
in 1885 a group of short pieces, Fantasies at Navesink, and 
in 1888 the New York Herald paid him generously for what- 
ever he sent. 

He explained one day to a friend his method of composi- 
tion. When he was struck by an idea which offered the 
theme for a piece, he revolved it slowly in all its aspects, 
then, once definitely adopted, jotted it on paper which he 
slipped into an envelope. He did not trouble himself as to 
the form it should take, nor its possible bearing. He re- 
mained expectant of new suggestions and abandoned him- 
self entirely to the outcome. As soon as some development 
of the mother-idea came to his mind, he made a note to be 
put with the first one; on the day when he judged the sub- 
ject sufficiently developed and the idea ripe, he emptied 
the contents of his envelope and set to work. He always 
used his knees as a writing table; his pen was generally 
a large goose quill, and to jot down the impression of a 

304 



DAYS IN THE COTTAGE 305 

moment any paper within reach would do — wrapping paper, 
envelope, or newspaper margin, etc. He was never pro- 
vided with notebooks. For his prose pages he kept notes, 
review clippings, or no matter what document which he 
carried between two pasteboards held by a thread, with the 
collective title well in view. His poet arsenal was made up 
of an infinity of similar bundles, piled near him. 

Walt was never a great reader except at certain periods 
of his youth, when he was eager to advance by all the means 
at hand. The mountains of extracts and commentaries 
found after his death prove, however, what enormous sums of 
varied knowledge he accumulated all his life. He had read 
in his own way, but he had read few books through. Bucke 
remarked that when Walt took a notion to enter his library 
at London, he would have a dozen volumes about him and 
pass from one to another, without the shadow of system, 
reading here and there. The supposition that Walt lacked 
method would have been contradicted by the examination of 
some of his innumerable notebooks where were found pinned, 
pasted, or inserted in surprising order, treasures of informa- 
tion gathered from all sources throughout his life. He had 
a book of citations and reading extracts. Surely a scientist 
or even a literary man would not have practised the fantastic 
method which he followed in the course of this slow and in- 
cessant search in all directions at once, but it must be rec- 
ognized that from his point of view it was richer in results 
than if Walt had from childhood formed the habit of the 
mental discipline of the college. 

The little house would have been searched in vain for a li- 
brary. Walt owned in fact but two or three dozen books 
which never left his shelf. On these he was nourished, and he 
could recite pages of them. They were Shakespeare, a Bible, 
translation of Homer and Dante, poetry of Walter Scott — 
whose fiction he adored, with that of Victor Hugo, Leconte 
de Lisle, and George Sand and Fenimore Cooper — an 
Epictetus, an Ossian, an Omar Khayam, a venerable copy of 



306 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

Consuelo which he cherished, and the work of Felton on 
Greece. Mixed with papers could be found a Burns, Con- 
fessions of Jean Jacques, selections of American literature 
by Stedman, Spanish literature by Ticknor, Prose Writers and 
Poets of Germany by Hedge, the works of Fauriel and Ellis on 
the poetry of the Middle Ages. This alone proves the catholic- 
ity of his sympathy. Aside from these worn-out volumes, 
and some of which were almost one with his life, it could be 
said that the poet cared very little for books in general. 
New books he received in large numbers: after casting a 
rather indifferent glance at them he allowed them to lie on 
the floor or gave them to his friends. Toward the great 
moderns, his curiosity was qualified. If he knew fairly 
well Carlyle, Emerson, and Tennyson, the little that he had 
read of Ibsen, Ruskin, Tolstoi, or Browning was not enough 
to hold him long; Hugo was not known to him except by 
perhaps a hundred verses, but that was enough for Walt 
to hang his portrait framed in black near the window of 
his room, to prove his respect for the great poet of France. 
If books in general tempted him little, dailies and pe- 
riodicals had an attraction for him that age could not 
weaken, perhaps because they reflected the life of his time 
and because facts were more to him than philosophy. 
Every day he followed the big dailies and the local sheets, 
and kept clippings of them. He enjoyed especially illus- 
trated journals, and when a friend entered with a magazine 
under his arm, he asked to look at it. He had experienced 
the world and knew its entanglements, and he manifested 
the same interest as before for actuality, the business of the 
country, international events. That great insatiable ap- 
petite for living every-day humanity could never be dimin- 
ished in him. When a visitor came to see him, the news 
of the day was one of the favourite subjects. Even with his 
enforced seclusion he still proved himself an American of the 
nineteenth century, part of his time, and curious in following 
its orientations. His natural clairvoyance, his multiple 



DAYS IN THE COTTAGE 307 

experience, his profound knowledge of men always free from 
acrimony was seen in his judgment on contemporary events. 
In 1870 he followed with keen interest the vicissitudes of 
the Franco-Prussian War. He denounced Napoleon III 
but the French people had all his sympathy. 1 He honoured 
Victor Emmanuel; he had deep esteem for Frederick III, 
but not for his successor. Some of his opinions show a par- 
ticularly lucid intelligence. In 1873 he foresaw the expulsion 
from Cuba of the Spaniards — realized some years after his 
death. Many times he announced the inevitable absorption 
of Canada by the United States. He had the intoxication 
of his race and believed in its expansion: what is called to-day 
American imperialism could find in him more than an argu- 
ment and an anticipated approval. He always declared 
himself a free trader and advocate of political rights for 
women. Strange, too, this impenitent celibate considered 
marriage and the family the fundamental foundations of the 
Republic. He also thought the world was too much governed. 
Religious, social, literary polemics usually found him un- 
interested. He was very categorical and even vehement in 
affirming his tendencies, yet he showed limitless indulgence 
toward individuals. Without pretending to be an eclectic 
he was too conscious of the role devolved upon each one in 
the enormous economy of the world not to yield to men and 
doctrines full and exact justice. He had no need to reread 
Epictetus to be persuaded of the immanent and final equity 
of the universe; he carried the instinct of it within him, 
reflected in every line of his face. 

He had to beguile the monotony of the days by a semblance 
of activity. Some were too heavy and he could neither 
read nor write. Now he remained still, his glance wandering, 
listening to the sound of the quiet street or weighing his 
thoughts. In such moments a pleasant word or the spirited 
face of a friend did him good. Too often one came to see 
him to tell him of trouble or to engage in the discussion of 



^Calamus, p. 73. 



308 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

grave questions; it was carefree and bright presences sug- 
gesting good fresh air which he most needed to escape the 
heavy hours. One of his invariable occupations was to send 
a word of remembrance to his friends. Often it was a postal 
card with some simple, affectionate words telling his occupa- 
tion at the moment, his state of health, generally in an opti- 
mistic way. The loving hearts, the great companions whose 
tenderness he tested, were never absent from his thought, 
and to his last moments it was his preoccupation to keep 
intact the bond of affection which united him to the little 
phalanx. When he did not feel inclined to write to each 
one separately, he sent news to one of them asking him to 
communicate it to a second and so on. Very often instead 
of writing he sent to his favourites a paper, a review, an illus- 
tration. When his name or some item concerning him ap- 
peared in a journal, his first care was to procure some dozen 
copies which he sent to them. He discovered at Camden 
a curious little printing shop which attracted him. He used 
to have printed there "memory leaves" which he sent to his 
friends — a more direct message from him — made in advance 
of their formal appearance in a magazine. 

In the years before 1888 the old man could at least count 
on the invariable return of some pleasant hours each week, 
his Sunday visit with his excellent friend Thomas Harned, 
brother-in-law of Horace Traubel, the young comrade whose 
devoted pure affection was unforgettably established. 
Walt called this house his "other home," so much did he find 
himself at ease there. "Every Sunday when I get up, I 
say to myself: I believe that I will go to-day to Tom's." 
And he came regularly, not by habit, but because he loved 
the household, found himself in congenial company, ex- 
panded in conversation and good cheer, and proved himself 
the best of company. During these delightful reunions Walt 
would recite favourite poems, never his own. Before the 
portrait of Lincoln on the wall he sometimes lifted his glass 
saying " I drink to you." With his unusual independence 



DAYS IN THE COTTAGE 309 

of manner, his disdain of convention, he yet proved on these 
occasions the perfect gentleman that he naturally was. 
Never the least vulgar expression came from him, even when 
men were the sole company. 

One of the attractions of the Harned home for Walt 
was the children. He was their natural companion. Be- 
tween the fine old man and children the bond was marvellous. 
Sometimes the very little ones were affrighted by his great 
beard and his natural majesty but a word from him and they 
were won. In Mickle Street the children coming home from 
school always greeted him when they passed the window. 
They brought him flowers in their season. During a time of 
extreme pain, when the least noise caused him suffering, he 
would not allow the nurse to drive them away. 

The occasions were rare that Walt, besides the Sunday 
dinner at the Harneds', indulged in eating with friends. His 
health would not permit. After 1885 his strength gradually 
declined. He was able to make two visits to Glendale where 
he had written the beautiful nature sketches of Specimen 
Days. Ordinarily he passed his days at the window of his 
room, seated in his big arm chair, a wolf skin thrown over 
the back, dressed in loose gray, cuffs of his shirt rolled back 
disclosing his strong hands, well proportioned, his workman's 
hands always clean, lying on the arm of the chair or holding 
pencil and paper. Flowers sent by friends were the life now 
in the shadowed room. Sometimes in the beautiful evenings 
he came to sit on the sidewalk, under a tree near the house, 
stayed there, alone or with a friend, to breathe the fresh 
air. Passersby stopped to talk to him, children played round 
him; it was still a way of mingling with the life of the street. 
But soon he could only with difficulty move from room to 
room. 

Recluse as he was, he inquired the news and when he 
learned that any one about him was in need his good heart 
responded to it. Though simple as he was and removed 
from people, a certain curiosity, blended with consideration 



310 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HISJWORK 

and benevolence, concerning the white-bearded invalid, 
brought many from the neighbourhood to the door. By 
public rumours it was known thereabouts that he was a poet, 
and this profession badly defined, eccentric, intensified the 
uncertainty of his neighbours. Of his goodness at least 
more than one had positive proof. 



PART EIGHT 

THE SETTING SUN 

Camden (1888-1892) 



XXVIII 

A NEW ASSAULT FOILED 

It was a few days after celebrating with his friends his 
sixty-ninth birthday that Walt suffered a severe prostration. 
It was at the close of a wonderful evening with his friend, 
Doctor Bucke, an evening passed by the river watching the 
sun in his red triumphal setting : 

Shot gold, maroon and violet, dazzling silver, emerald, fawn, 

The earth's whole amplitude and nature's multiform power consigned for 

once to colors; 
The light, the general air possessed by them — colors till now unknown, 
No limit, coxifine — not the western sky alone — the high meridian — North, 

South, all, 
Pure luminous color fighting the silent shadows to the last. 1 

He did not feel the chill of twilight till he returned to his 
room. Then he was overcome, hurled to the floor where he 
remained motionless for hours, unable to call for aid. Later 
he was able to reach his bed. The next day he had another 
attack, followed by a third at noon. 

Under these repeated assaults, the great giant this time 
staggered. Doctor Bucke and Doctor Osier came. They 
found the patient on the sofa of the little room, momentarily 
unable to speak ; his whole body shook . Presently he was able 
to mutter: " This will pass soon, and if it does not — all is well." 
During the entire week the poet was between life and death. 
His remarkable self-mastery and tranquil courage never left 
him. His dear friends expected his death any moment. He 
himself in these redoubtable hours visualized the last one, 
and it was then that he pencilled verses of farewell to his 



iWalt Whitman: Leaves of Grass, p. 400. 

313 



314 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

poems, the heart of his heart, calling them by name, like dear 
friends who circled about his bed. . . . 

Now precedent songs, farewell, — by every name farewell. . . .' 

On June 12th there was a ray of hope. Doctor Bucke was 
forced to leave almost sure of the result of the attack. Fate 
did not mark that hour and still once more Walt foiled the 
assault. He was persuaded that he owed this to the affec- 
tionate presence of Doctor Bucke; but he owed it perhaps to 
his wonderful constitution. Another attack in his enfeebled 
state would surely be fatal; waiting he survived, and with 
his humour and his splendid calm he summed up the situa- 
tion: "The old vessel is not longer fit for the voyage. But 
the flag is still at the mast and I am still at the helm." 

Unspeakably slow was his convalescence, with its ups and 
downs, its continual relapses, its train of suffering, its strict 
confinement. For weeks and months he had periods of 
lethargic heaviness, of deadly lassitude when it was im- 
possible to write a letter, when speech was painful and 
difficult. Paleness and fatigue proved the gravity of the 
crisis. Perhaps he might pull himself out of the "ditch." 
He was not sure of it. He was happy that his head was clear 
and his right arm of use. "Now that I am reduced to these 
two things, what great blessings they are," said the invulner- 
able optimist. He had not lost his gently ironic gaiety 
during these sombre hours. He had been an invalid for more 
than fifteen years, subjected to every torture and to a slow 
dissolution when he should normally have enjoyed long, joy- 
ous, healthy years, yet he not only did not regret a single min- 
ute of his spending himself freely in hospitals, but he proudly 
rejoiced in his experience without which he would have lost 
"something infinitely more precious." To Kennedy who 
sent him roses from Massachusetts during the summer he 
wrote in mid-October : " It is dark, I have had my dinner and 
am sitting near the fire and gaslight, anchored and tied to 

^Leaves of Grass, p. 403. 



A NEW ASSAULT FOILED 315 

my old big democratic chair and room, the same as all 
summer, now in the fall and soon the long winter and (if I 
live) probably through all. . . . Upon the whole get 
along and baffle lonesomeness and the blues; God bless you 
and the wife." 1 

Toward the end of another year lamentable complications 
set in which caused him frightful suffering day and night; 
Doctor Osier would not leave his patient, giving his service 
free. In reality, Walt, though conqueror of the attack, 
declined visibly. The enemy, the lurking enemy, made a 
great leap in the dark toward his prey; if he was not able 
to seize him yet, he would do so soon. The old man knew 
it, and looked ahead, ready for the final attack. He had 
scarcely need to repeat with the sage: "What is good for 
you and nature, is good for me," that peace might dwell in 
him. 

This illness overtook him in the midst of the prepara- 
tion of a new volume which he wished to put out that year. 
The proofs of it he received on May 31st. During the terri- 
ble week in which his life "was not worth a cent" he tried 
in his lapses of ease to examine the proofs, which his 
friend Horace Traubel brought him from the printer. Once 
more Walt knew the joy of seeing a limitless affection, a 
fresh and marvellously comprehensive devotion respond to 
the appeal which all his life, all his work proclaimed. In 
this critical hour, afflicted as he was, what would he have 
done, even with all his heroic will, without the dear friend 
who every evening came to discuss with him the details of 
the book, and who became from this moment the indispensa- 
ble auxiliary, the alter ego, with whose help he could comfort- 
ably arrange his last publication. Traubel had been at one 
time a printer and the two men understood one another 
fully. Walt, always slow in his corrections, was kept back 
by weeks of drowsiness when it was impossible to read a line; 
and though the uncertainty as to the future and the determi- 

*W. S. Kennedy: Reminiscences of Wall Whitman, p. 59. 



316 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

nation to complete his book were a daily incentive, the work 
appeared endless. His manuscript was not entirely re-edited 
and he lacked the strength to put the last touch to his notes. 
Still the work progressed in spite of weeks of lethargy, 
and Walt wrote: "Traubel is unspeakably faithful and 
good. ... I would have been able to do nothing with 
the printing without him. . . ." And he, during these 
unforgettable hours passed with the poet, interpreting his 
least gesture, listening to his vivid conversation in fits and 
starts, could measure the royal reward — which he never 
sought — of his trusty devotion, of his tender, exalted faith, 
of his nights passed after the day's work, in reviewing' proofs 
and attending to all correspondence. 

During these months of daily cooperation Traubel recog- 
nized with what minute care Whitman set about the prepara- 
tion of his volume. No matter how trifling the difficulty, 
he never decided off hand; he gave everything its time, to be 
weighed for and against. Without refusing advice, he 
wished no decision taken without his consent. He asked 
about the overseer, the printers, and charged his friend to 
take them either a silver piece or a portrait to pay them for 
trying to suit him. He was solicitous of the material appear- 
ance of a volume; he would not tolerate, for example, that a 
chapter end at the bottom of a page and to avoid offending 
the eye, he did not hesitate to sacrifice a paragraph. Noth- 
ing was left to chance. He might be deceived in the end, and 
acknowledge his error, but not regret it. 

Faithful to its title, November Boughs, after a very laboured 
parturition, appeared in mid-autumn 1888, with the name 
of the publisher, McKay. It was a collection of verse and 
prose in which were unified the different critical or auto- 
biographic bits which he published here and there since 1882, 
and grouped under a single title, Sands at Seventy, about 
sixty very short poems — the longest did not fill a page. 
Close to notes on Shakespeare, the Bible, Burns, Tennyson, 
and memorial bits from his notebooks, he put there, such as 



A NEW ASSAULT FOILED 317 

it is with its dross, an essay planned for a time on Elias Hicks, 
the Quaker preacher; he with his parents had heard the old 
man preach. Sands is inscribed to the memory of a man or 
an event, or perhaps the meditations on the great thought of 
death, anticipated, invited, caressed, without any complaint 
or despair, rather with a latent exultation. Like a snowbird, 
singing amid desolation, from the depth of "old age land 
locked within its winter bay," "held by sluggish floes," "with 
gay heart," he still made his song heard. 1 It was no longer 
the time of the great hymn of maturity, running free like a 
river: age, confinement, physical suffering had touched his 
inspiration. . . . 

As I sit writing here, sick and grown old, 

Not my least burden is that dulness of years, querilities, 

Ungracious glooms, aches, lethargy, constipation, whimpering ennuis, 

May filter in my daily songs. 2 

But if the ampleness of the previous poems is no longer 
found, their emotion seems intensified by the gravity of the 
hour and the closeness of the unknown. And how, through 
these bits made from odd verses, which resemble remotely the 
fragments of Greek tragedies collected from their dramas, 
the mighty personality of the man vibrates! It was like a 
prolonged farewell, like words tender and grave which friend 
repeats to friend on the threshold, after having clasped him 
in his arms, amid "the shadows of nightfall deepening," 
postponing severance, garrulous to the very last. 3 The por- 
trait which accompanied November Boughs seemed one of a 
good god with hoary hair, resting under a tree of his Paradise, 
his limbs stiff with the fatigue of the day. 

Horace Traubel was not at the end of his labour when 
this work was done. Walt was determined to prepare his 
complete work from 1855 to 1888, verse and prose, in a single 



^■Leaves of Grass, p. 394. 
*Id., p. 386. 
*Id., p. 404. 



318 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

volume. It was the "great book," as he called it, whose out- 
put was to be limited to six hundred copies, each containing 
an autograph. This formidable quarto of 900 pages, of 
rather clumsy appearance, appeared a little before Christ- 
mas; the author sold it off hand, and gave it as a "personal" 
and "authentic" edition. Once more he was his own pub- 
lisher. There was something characteristic and simple in 
this quaint way of distributing literary merchandise which 
suited him: it was one of the primitive and strong notions 
which he piously kept as a personal custom, amid the com- 
plexities of the modern civilization which he admired so 
deeply. After his intimate friends received their copy, 
affectionately dedicated, Walt was ready to meet orders 
which arrived from time to time from Asia or Australia, as 
well as England or even the continent. The number was 
sufficiently within bounds that he could without much effort 
make his sales by drawing directly from the big package 
placed in his room. In reprinting his poems, despite his 
great weakness, he persisted in revising the entire work to 
get rid of slight faults of punctuation or spelling which had 
escaped his vigilance in the previous volume. With these 
corrections and November Boughs which was added to this, 
the text corresponds to the eighth edition. As soon as the 
"great book" appeared, Sylvester Baxter, a warm admirer 
and a friend, proudly greeted it in the Boston Herald. 

From the other side of the Atlantic it was plain that his 
place was already won. An English reprint of Specimen Days 
was made in 1887, in a collection edited by Ernest Rhys, 
followed the year after by Democratic Vistas; the poet wrote 
prefaces to both; and November Boughs appeared in Glasgow 
the same time as in Philadelphia. In 1889 a partial trans- 
lation of Leaves of Grass for which Knortz and Rolleston had 
not found a publisher in Germany, even in offering to pay the 
cost of the volume, was brought out in Zurich with Schabe- 
litz. 1 For years before this Luigi Gamberale published an 

iH. Traubel: With Walt Whitman in Camden, p. 18. 



A NEW ASSAULT FOILED 319 

Italian version of the book the title Canti Scelti. For the 
first time a trial in another language was given it: was it 
already being proved that before finishing its career Leaves of 
Grass would be translated into every language on earth? The 
cosmopolitan following was advancing, never again to halt. 
From France, two men joined it with generous applause. 
First it was Leo Quesnel in 1884, in Revue Politique et 
Litteraire, an enthusiastic, suggestive, and comprehensive 
study in which the man was viewed in his essential character 
and which remains in a brief form, after a quarter of a cen- 
tury and the many new judgments which it inspired, one of 
the most absolute presentations of the poet and his work. 
The second, four years later, announced a still more brilliant 
testimony whose amplitude was not marked only by the 
large number of pages which it filled. It was Gabriel Sarra- 
zin with the essay — Renaissance de la Poesie Anglaise. Walt 
Whitman, when he had this translated by a friend in Janu- 
ary, 1889 — he read no language but his own — experienced 
one of the great joys of his life. He was seized to his very 
depths by emotion for this magnificent insight — the unity 
of his character and his book understood by this Frenchman 
far away, as he had been when the letters of Anne Gilchrist to 
Rossetti appeared, twenty years before. And the first re- 
action persisted. He insistently alluded to Gabriel Sarra- 
zin, when he wrote to his friends at this time, proving how 
deeply he was touched. In thanking Kennedy for the 
translation, he said: "His piece is like a great, great trade- 
wind hurrying the ship into port." Months later he re- 
sumed, "It is a marvellously consoling page for me — coming 
from a man who proved himself so evidently a Frenchman 
from Paris, armed from hand to foot, with a penetrating eye, 
with a sharp scent and ear, plunging to the very depth of 
criticism. " And in September he added: "The Essay of 
Sarrazin seems the boldest stroke which has been struck in 
my behalf up to this time." 1 From this time, Walt placed 

JW. S. Kennedy: Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, pp. 61-73. 



320 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

his admirer in France with the great companions of his work, 
O'Connor, Burroughs, Bucke, Anne Gilchrist — small, precious 
phalanx in whose escort he would appear to posterity. He 
sent to his new friend, then in New Caledonia, the "great 
book," which just appeared, and an affectionate correspon- 
dence sprung up between them. It was "marvellously con- 
soling" in fact — not alone for the poet himself — to see the 
advanced French thought adhere to this modern gospel of 
the New World, communicating to it, very far from all dogma, 
a wonderful expression of humanity and nature. 

All this was like a breeze come to refresh the invalid in his 
solitude and inactivity, and brought him a mystic response 
to the desperate appeal, wild and yet tender, which he threw 
out. The world was no longer deaf as before. When his 
friend Carpenter published his poems Towards Democracy the 
old bard could feel the indirect homage which they implied. 
And soon he receives from England a new response, in the 
pages of The New Spirit of Havelock Ellis, a book big with 
new signification and of which the critic power does not weaken 
the wonderful inspiration, a response unrestricted, free and 
generous as he loved, and such as one of the elect could for- 
mulate, combining the sensibility of the artist and the power of 
a scholar and philosopher. One day he said to Traubel, in 
his picturesque language: "I like frank people, those who 
detest or those who love, the yes or the no which one does 
not misunderstand." 

There is a little poem in November Boughs in which the 
secluded, motionless man is painted : 

In some unused lagoon, some nameless bay, 

On sluggish, lonesome waters, anchor'd near the shore, 

An old dismasted, gray and batter'd ship, disabled, done, 

After free voyages to all the seas of earth, haul'd up at last and hawser 'd 

tight, 
Lies rusting mouldering. 1 



leaves of Grass, p. 403. 



A NEW ASSAULT FOILED 321 

Now his friends could mount the narrow stairway of the 
little house to see Walt in his room, his holy of holies, his 
fortress, his den, his solitary domain now and always, and 
where he lived like an old captain sheltered in his cabin. 

A poem, that room. . . . The little parlour below 
where he had worked up to this was already a fine confusion 
of newspapers, manuscripts, and "of everything under 
heaven": but it was nothing beside his room since it became 
his only "workshop." The bewilderment of visitors in the 
presence of the extraordinary bric-a-brac, in the midst of 
which the great incorrigible Bohemian lived, was easily under- 
stood ; all the same, it was only the first impression and after 
some minutes all this queer and indigent chaos was trans- 
formed in contact with the reigning-presence which it sur- 
rounded. In heaps, in bundles, in stacks, by the seats, 
crammed in baskets of loose papers, between the legs of 
tables and chairs, under the table and stand, were heaped the 
numberless manuscripts, letters, clippings, which Whitman 
had accumulated since his youth and which he kept with the 
inextricable daily confusion, old reviews and new, books, 
proofs, nameless things, mixed with the wood for his winter 
fire. WTien one took in from the threshold the heterogeneous 
heaps in which the poet seemed to be blockaded, the first 
feeling was that of the aftermath of a cataclysm. Then 
courageously, without daring to place a finger on an old letter 
or a page of yellow manuscript, one was compelled to make 
a way among these dusty reefs to the arm chair where the 
smile of the master was the royal welcome. Under this ap- 
parent desolation there was a singular order: the master of 
the house alone had the secret of it. These mysterious time- 
worn bundles, which contained carefully classified notes, 
documents, letters, belonging to some business or some work 
in preparation, had perhaps the air of being piled pell mell; 
however, any time that W r alt needed a page, he left his chair 
with effort, went toward a corner of the room, and taking 
by the end the heavy cane he leaned on, harpooned with 



322 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

curved handle the pack in which he was certain to find it. 
It was marvellous to see with what dexterity he operated, 
even in the dark. Whether by foresight, or whether he 
possessed exactly in his head the map of this archipelago of 
papers, he astonished his friends each time, however accus- 
tomed to these tours de force, by the sureness of his eye and 
the immediate success of his search into the indescribable 
confusion. He refused absolutely that any one help him in 
foraging among his papers, for a strange hand would in- 
evitably transform into real disorder this methodical and 
disciplined disorder. 

There it was, in the midst of this arsenal, that the old man 
worked, meditated, ate his meals, and received visitors. He 
had about him, within reach of his cane, this countless 
number of notes, which after his death astonished his literary 
executors by their unsuspected riches, and in which a half 
century of life was accumulated. "Wherever I go," he 
says, "somewhere — winter or summer, city or country, alone 
at home or travelling, I must take notes." And all of them 
were classified, ready to be used some day. Some sheep 
could easily have nestled among the piles, but was it not 
simpler and more convenient to have all these treasures 
scattered about him than to pack them in drawers or boxes? 
His room had a floor, therefore he used it. 

In certain aspects this famous room is identical with the 
man and with his work : it is like his poems, in which ordinary 
people see but chaos, in spite of the admirable order found 
there for himself and for others. Only it must be understood 
what one means by " order." For instance in the great note- 
book which he always kept near him and where the ad- 
dresses of buyers of his books were written there was no in- 
dex; no alphabetical order helped one to find them: he how- 
ever found this practical and clear. In these surroundings 
with which the most modest workman would not have been 
content, the great old man was happy, now that he was forced 
to live indoors. There surrounded by books, which he re- 






A NEW ASSAULT FOILED 323 

read incessantly without ever wearying of them, by his notes 
from which he formed from time to time the subject of an 
article, by his commonplace gewgaws, before a good fire the 
crackling of which he loved, he lived in a manner perfectly 
adapted to his needs. "Some friends are surprised," wrote 
Horace Traubel, "to see him living in the midst of such sim- 
plicity. But he finds in this room all that a home can con- 
tain of happiness and sanctity. There is not probably in 
the whole world a workroom like this one." Seated in the 
imposing rocking chair which the children of his friend Don- 
aldson gave him for a Christmas present, timbered as by 
some stout ship's spars, the old Northman commanding it 
filled the room with his magnificent presence. A time worn 
look, a scent of old oak attach both to the chair and the per- 
son occupying it. 1 And when the aureole of his white hair 
lay against the wolf skin, spread as a protection against cold, 
the extraordinary beauty of his face was still more striking. 
Immediately that threshold was crossed some visitors were 
astonished at this beauty; they felt then in the presence of a 
sovereign of the invisible world whose bright welcome and 
placid good humour could not make them forget his inde- 
scribable majesty. No disagreeable musty odour came from 
that invalid's den, in spite of the litter there: Walt kept the 
windows of his room constantly open, even as he kept his curi- 
osity concerning the present awake. With the odour of old 
things which filled the poet's room was mingled something 
of the alert and the living. 

Such was the absolute confinement till the close of the year. 
It was then that Warren Fritzinger, a son-in-law of Mrs. 
Davis, came to be Whitman's nurse. He was an old sailor 
and had already been three times round the world; that was 
indeed a recommendation with the poet, who was fascinated 
by all which concerned the sea. This man remained with 
him to the last. To insure his wages, some friends of Whit- 
man, who were devoted to him, assumed the sacrifice — 



^Complete Prose, p. 521. 






324 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

heavy for some of them — of a monthly contribution. Walt 
was not a difficult patient and demanded little of the nurse: 
when, during the day, he tapped with his cane on the 
floor of his room, it was usually to send him for an outing. 
Upon his features was imprinted the weight of the last 
crisis. Not only was there discernible an expression of 
lassitude, but his pink cheeks had become pale and some- 
what sunken. When he felt too weak to sit in his arm chair, 
he remained in bed and received his friends. If not he rose 
at eight o'clock for his breakfast and to read the morning 
papers. It was painful to see when he dragged himself, with 
the help of the furniture, the wall, and his cane from room to 
room, and to think what the splendid form had been before 
the stroke which had levelled him. The stubborn old man 
did not wish to be helped and meant to be sufficient for 
himself as long as an atom of strength was left him. 

The buggy and bay horse, now useless, had been sold. 
Done the fine rides through the woods, to the riverside, along 
the suburbs. No more would Walt go to be refreshed by the 
wind, carried by his trotter. However bitter the privation, 
he had to be resigned to it. And after all was it right that 
he should complain, for though entirely broken in nearly all 
his branches, he still put forth a proud trunk. 









XXIX 

MEDITATION AT TWILIGHT 

It was not only the phases and happenings of a decline al- 
ready evident that suggest the touching sight of these last 
three surviving years during which the man overwhelmed, 
ravaged, dying a little more each day, calmly resists and main- 
tains his head high and clear above the wreck, while around 
him the little phalanx of his friends draws closer, to be near 
at the end. This largeness, this heroic simplicity, this emo- 
tion made up of these last moments, it is not perhaps given 
to translate them except by certain portraits taken in 1890 
and 1891; it is enough to understand them to see that never 
was Walt so beautiful as at this august hour, in which death, 
invited with a grave joy, advances toward the stoic old man 
ready to welcome him with his good smile and to reach him 
his strong hand saying: How are you, mighty one? I am 
waiting for you. Here I am Walt Whitman the artisan who 
has sung his race, obeyed the inner call. . . . Wherever 
you lead me, I have faith in you and I wish to continue with 
you the wonderful voyage of my early life! Perhaps death 
hesitated in seeing so much light still about his white hair, 
so much human pride in the face of this man. . . . No 
matter, she was not afraid of him, she was his Comrade, the 
last comer and not the less dear. 

To the middle of July, 1889, Walt had not seen once the sky 
above his head; he could scarcely leave his room. One 
whole year of imprisonment was completed by bereavement, 
the death of dear Douglas O'Connor who died at the age 
of fifty-seven. The seclusion had been still harder than at 
the time of his first attack, despite his being used to it and 
the faithful friendships which surrounded him. It was then 

325 



326 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

that his friends planned a way to procure again for the in- 
valid the joy of fresh air; one day Horace Traubel went to 
Philadelphia for a fine wheel chair. The slow vehicle, 
pushed by a faithful hand, took the place of the buggy, which 
itself had replaced the jaunts afoot. It was not perhaps the 
most exhilarating means of locomotion, but he blessed this 
last resource; life was lovely and good since he could still, 
with body in ruin, go to taste the breeze and to feel human- 
ity about him. Walt was wheeled toward some peaceful part 
of the riverside and remained there an hour silently absorb- 
ing the surrounding spectacle. He had never been a great 
talker, and the gossips had always annoyed him, but now the 
intervals of silence lengthened. Even before a friend, he often 
remained without speaking a word : nothing was more grateful 
to him than the silent communion in the warmth of a dear pres- 
ence. He said one day to Traubel: "I think that men in 
proportion as they understand one another end by saying 
nothing; a look and all is said." Not a morose silence, 
rather a serene and confident gaiety. And he observed him- 
self, studied his progressive dissolution, without ceasing to 
declare himself grateful. He was happy to be "well" 
enough, to preserve intact his mentality — to be able to put 
the last touch to his work, and to see himself understood by 
a small number of choice spirits. If relief of pain came after 
a bad week, if a happy incident occurred or the sun smiled, 
immediately the ray of joy reached his friends in writing. 
"I write but little — someone send me fruits. ... I 
have sold fifty copies unbound of the big book for three dol- 
lars each. . . . Have had many visitors, talked some. . . . 
I hear the noise from the streets, the peddlers; pretty little 
children come — heaps of letters some of them queer enough." 1 
The worst indeed would have had to unite their studied 
cruelty to exhaust his good humour. 

A little after his first excursion in the wheel chair, the 
thirty-first of May came round: to his friends this anniver- 

*W. S. Kennedy: Reminiscences, pp. 64, 66, 67. 



MEDITATION AT TWILIGHT 327 

sary was especially worth celebrating, it was Walt's seven- 
tieth birthday. These fraternal love feasts repeated year 
after year knit the bonds of affection between those who 
were determined not to let his name be lost, to hand it on 
to posterity as a sacred trust. It took the form this time 
of a local celebration: a group of "citizens of Camden,'' 
lawyers, merchants, functionaries, gave a banquet to the 
poet. The largest hall in the village was chosen: it was 
decorated with flags, and an orchestra was ready; at the 
fixed hour only the hero was lacking, whose presence was not 
announced till the close of the dinner. But Walt was still 
so weak that his friends were anxiously asking themselves 
whether he could appear for the toasts, especially with the 
violent storm raging outside. He came; and at the moment, 
when the arm chair with the surprised old man in it appeared 
at the door, all the guests rose in silence, then cheered by sus- 
tained applause. Camden's famous citizen answered the 
homage by waving his hat. He was wheeled to the head of 
the table and there before a large basket of flowers and a bot- 
tle of champagne he listened to the president's introduction. 
"My friends," Whitman said, "though announced to give an 
address, there is no such intention. Following the impulse of 
the spirit (for I am at least half of Quaker stock), I have 
obeyed the command to come and look at you, for a minute, 
and show myself, face to face; which is probably the best I can 
do. But I have felt no command to make a speech; and shall 
not therefore attempt any. All I have felt the imperative 
conviction to say I have already printed in my books of poem 
and prose; to which I refer any who may be curious. And 
so, hail and farewell. Deeply acknowledging this deep 
compliment, with my best respects and love to you personally 
— to Camden — to New Jersey, and to all represented here 
you must excuse me from any word further." 1 Then he heard 
all the speeches with the same ease as if he were of the guests 
come to honour another man; when a passage especially 

Wamden's Compliment to Wall Whitman. 



328 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

pleased him, lie applauded by tapping on the table with a 
bottle placed in front of him. 

Numerous were the friends who Walt, with his poor 
weak eyes — those gray-blue eyes with heavy lashes which had 
so many times scrutinized human faces — could only dis- 
tinguish mistily; friends from Philadelphia, young writers, 
journalists, scholars, editors, even a judge, all one with the 
Camden citizens. Still more numerous were the absent 
admirers who from England, America, and everywhere sent 
their greeting on the seventieth birthday of the poet: a real 
variegated bouquet, which the old man breathed with a 
delight not less than of the basket of flowers from which the 
snowy head lifted itself. From John Burroughs to Gabriel 
Sarrazin all the scattered members of his spiritual family 
were named that evening. And it was possible also to see a 
symptom in the fact that the important newspapers sent 
reporters. After the last toast one of the guests intoned 
a song, from memory, with the poet's help; then he 
left the hall, the basket of flowers on his knees, his chair 
swaying with the crowd of guests who came to shake hands 
with him. Surely Walt was happy this evening: however, 
with his dislike of public homage, he expressed regret for the 
intimate celebration which Thomas Harned gave him the 
year before. There was perhaps a little too much of effusion 
and demonstration in the Camden compliment. 

One of the practical results of the seventieth birthday 
dinner was the gift to the jubilarian of a purse contain- 
ing a subscription, more than one hundred and twenty dol- 
lars. To this he added a sum of his own in the bank to 
be used as he needed it. Another fruit of his seventy years 
was a special edition of Leaves of Grass, the ninth — limited to 
three hundred copies — small in size, morocco binding; the six 
portraits or ornaments gave a particular stamp of elegance. 
The poet sold it for two and a half dollars with the same 
simplicity which he offered some of autographed portraits — 
"all well enveloped" for three dollars. Was he less a great 



MEDITATION AT TWILIGHT 329 

man, because he was an agent? To these poems he annexed 
Sands at Seventy which made part of his last collection, and 
the volume closed by a page of prose from Sands at Seventy — 
A Backward Glance o'er Travelled Roads. This time it was 
the last step before the really final edition, the conclusion 
presently reached by the incessant changes through which 
this unique book, enriched at every renewal, had undergone 
for thirty-five years. 

A backward glance over the travelled road. . . . How 
many times the old man had glanced and lingered during 
the long days of seclusion, now that he worked and read 
little. What a road, what a journey! One summer day, 
in the flower of his strength, he began his enormous task not 
without having measured his strength; and he ventured 
with the candour of his enthusiastic and meditative faith. 
How had he dared? He asked himself now whether he ac- 
complished his great design: to take up the challenge which 
Democracy and modern Science seemed to throw at Poetry. 1 
For it was certainly in this spirit that he put his living self 
in a book, in order that America might study herself in the 
mirror of one great Individuality. Twenty years of incom- 
prehension, of furious disdain or ridicule, of efforts to sup- 
press his work, followed. He had, it is true, in the dawn of 
the first day heard the glad greeting of Emerson (those 
marvellous words of strength and light which surprised him) , 
and two or three companions, much later, magnificently 
defended him. But these were lost hi such a desert of ignor- 
ance and malignity that often, despite the robust faith in 
him, he had doubted the future. . . . Yet he had never 
lost courage and he always persisted. . . . 

After patient years and years, here and there some listen- 
ers answered. O the noble pages of Anne Gilchrist and 
the affection so tender to a solitary soul of his friends in 
England! And he succeeded after thirty years of struggle 
in which he fought unarmed, his soul Gospel locked in 

^Leaves of Grass, p. 427. 



330 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

his breast. Like a talisman he had a little army of en- 
thusiastic friends and defenders, the most faithful and con- 
vinced, such as never fell to a precursor; and thanks to 
them the great goal, to know that he was heard and un- 
derstood, was reached. And in blessing fate which pro- 
cured him these friends he thought sometimes if he deserved 
detraction, he certainly was not worthy of such splendid 
friends. 

And after all, the masses were not won. . . . He had 
said to his countrymen: 

Take my leaves America, take them South and take them North. 
Make welcome for them everywhere, for they are your own offspring. 1 

America had not taken them and fully disdained them. He 
remained misunderstood except by men of letters, original 
artists, exceptional people. It is possible to mention 
a few advocates such as the original planter of Alabama 
who for years was nourished on Leaves of Grass, almost 
neglected his farm, and who travelled a thousand miles to 
see face to face "the man who had done the most for him 
after Christ;" 2 or that noble woman of Detroit who read to 
her children the great book of life to educate them. But these 
were eccentric people, those apart whom the mass would 
have shunned. What antagonism between the crowd and 
himself, that the aversion of the latter was so tenacious, 
that custom could not overcome the surprise, occasioned 
particularly by his queer form? What variance? He came 
from the masses by his whole being; he remained his whole 
life, more than any poet in the world, in contact with the 
masses, he addressed himself exclusively to the masses, he 
exalted the masses in poems cut by them into his flesh; and 
the masses did not recognize their blood. He remained 
for them unintelligible. It was as if he had made some 

^-Leaves of Grass, p. 20. 

2 W. S. Kennedy: Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, pp. 18-21. 



MEDITATION AT TWILIGHT 331 

great discovery in the most occult corner of the field of 
science, forbidden to the crowd, he who had plunged into the 
heart of everyday humanity, who had but translated univer- 
sal and primitive emotion. What was this mysterious law 
which led men obstinately to reject a nourishment prepared 
with their more intimate needs in mind? 

And this interdiction he saw confirmed not only by the 
public, but by the American literary world. The great 
publishing houses persistently ignored him — and he was 
obliged always to be his own publisher. The verse which 
he sent for thirty years to the reviews had been generally 
returned; some of his poems had thus made the round of 
the periodicals of the country without finding a single 
harbour. The most recent example was that of Harpers' 
who refused his copy four times in succession; and he found 
himself rejected by all the great reviews of his country. He 
knew it now and sent nothing more. All the insults, all 
the deception, all the rebuffs that a blackballed writer could 
endure he had experienced one time or another. The bulk 
of the comprehensive articles which had appeared on his 
book in the American press — aside from the devout apprecia- 
tion of an O'Connor, a Burroughs, and a half dozen comrades 
— were those which he was obliged to publish and circulate 
himself in friendly papers, whether in New York, at Wash- 
ington, or at Camden, for the purpose of explaining and put- 
ting an end to the misunderstanding which kept the public 
away. As for the famous writers, from beginning to end, 
they were massed against him. He had no need, in order 
to know the measure of their sympathy toward him, that 
Edward Carpenter for instance reported that Lowell said 
he found nothing in Whitman; Longfellow that Whitman 
might have been a poet if he had sufficient education, and 
that Oliver Wendell Holmes admitted that he had talent 
but that instead of vying with nature, decking her with 
garlands, etc. It was true that he did not understand pro- 
fessional literary men and that their antipathy toward him 



332 WALT WHITMAN -THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

arose because they and he were made for different purposes. 
No matter he remained a Solitary, though his work can find 
its final justification only in one vast communion. 

He reviewed these memories without bitterness and even 
without sadness. He indulged in no grief. He complained 
to no one. He had his choice when he began. The in- 
gratitude of an age attracted him no more than physical 
infirmity, as a theme for sighs. He accepted it, reflecting 
on the secret reasons which in the thought of the cosmos 
could justify it. He was not without reproach and he knew 
well that many things in his work deserved the most violent 
attacks of his enemies. 1 

There was left then to be finished in silence the work of 
time. The question which an American review put — "In 
a hundred years will Walt Whitman be considered a great 
poet or will he be forgotten?" — was surely a delicate one, 
and no one will be able to answer before a century or even 
more. However distant might be the issue, he could wait 
and his work after him. He did not know more than another 
the secret of the future, though from the first day to the last 
no one had been persuaded as strongly as himself, and with- 
out possible illusion of the enormous new Sense of his book : 
but all the same he seemed to discern some encouraging 
sign. Had he not learned that in England his book had 
won an unlooked-for victory, at Oxford as well as among 
workmen, 2 and that even the peasants of Schleswig knew 
his name? And the young men who came to see him or who 
wrote to him, from all parts of the world, to tell him what he 
had been to them? And in Boston were there riot signs of a 
change of opinion? These white spots in the horizon were 
they forerunners of the dawn? . . . Yes, in truth he 
believed he saw success in the future. ... It was true 
that he had not won much up to this, but he had gained a 



iBucke: Walt Whitman, p. 59. 

2 The Honourable Mr. Francis Nielson, M. P., at the Whitman Centenary dinner in Chicago, stated 
that Shropshire workingmen read Leaves of Grass in 1880. Tr. 



MEDITATION AT TWILIGHT 333 

foothold. . . . He had understood certain aspects of 
the world and he thought that the report which he drew up 
would last. . . . And, inspired by this certitude, he 
could trust the century. He would have his hour, when the 
time came. One day perhaps humanity, in search of the 
word of the past which would help it to continue its route, 
would find itself confronted by his work, and suddenly 
the illuminating thrill would seize it. Till then it was not 
in the power of an individual to suppress his name from the 
world's list since some had pronounced it with limitless 
affection. These words which in a black day of his life 
he put into the mouth of Columbus, could he not repeat now 
that the horizon was clear? 

And these things I see suddenly, what mean they? 
As if some miracle, some hand divine unseal'd my eyes, 
Shadowy vast shapes smile through the air and sky, 
And on the distant waves sail countless ships, 
And anthems in new tongues I hear saluting me. 1 

After all, had he not tasted the kind of glory to which 
he could aspire by the vastness of his undertaking? Could 
it be accepted without discussion? The incessant struggles 
which he had endured, the fury of the attack directed against 
his work, had they not been providentially sustained to estab- 
lish its greatness and truth? Were not his very enemies 
a witness, as much as his most exalted admirers, of his un- 
deniable contribution as Precursor? The immortality of 
his message — he could not prove it, but he felt it as the 
indestructibility of his soul. He had above all the same 
serene, instinctive, ineradicable confidence in his personality 
and his work, a confidence against which all the logic of the 
world would have blunted its edge. . . . Surely, if the 
fight had been rough, the fruit which he was permitted to 
gather, at this close of the day, was worth all the conflict 
which he had to sustain. . . . 



^Leaves of Grass, p. 325. 



XXX 
HOUR OF APOTHEOSIS 

A series of Lincoln anniversary memorials sometimes in 
Camden, in Philadelphia, and even in New York were ova- 
tions to Whitman as well as pious tributes to Lincoln. His 
last visit to New York in 1887 was more than an atonement 
for years of neglect — being as it was a dramatic compliment 
to him of American men of art and letters — Stedman, Lowell, 
Mark Twain, John Hay, R. Watson Gilder, St. Gaudens; 
Andrew Carnegie made his Triumphant Democracy real by 
donating liberally to the poet of Democracy, 

Because, in 1889, Walt had not been able to celebrate the 
Lincoln anniversary, he determined the following year to 
conquer his weakness and perform this pious duty; it was 
perhaps for the last time. The meeting was to be on April 
15th, at the Contemporary Club of Philadelphia, and a few 
days before the grippe confined him to his bed. His friends 
persuaded him not to attempt the impossible; but the great 
volunteer was not of this mind and refused to be interfered 
with. Truly, they did not know "the full measure of his 
stubbornness." 

At the appointed time the old man arrived at the meet- 
ing in a cab. His daring was finally justified since all passed 
well. The very presence on the stage of the old dying 
athlete, come himself to pay tribute to the memory of the 
hero of the Union whom he compared with Moses, Ulysses, or 
Cromwell, was still more affecting than his words and imposed 
silence for his faults. His voice still had all its strength 
and the same charm of melody. Sometimes the speaker 
stopped reading his speech a moment to throw in a sentence or 
glance about the hall; and when he wished to indicate certain 

334 



HOUR OF APOTHEOSIS 335 

passages, he turned about in his arm chair and repeated them 
in a most fervent tone, his face uplifted. From this massive 
ruin, tottering on the brink of the grave, there was the same 
radiance as of old; and the light from which it came was more 
intense in proportion as the old tenons were loosed from their 
mortises. 

The month following there was another anniversary 
when Walt for the second time crossed the river — his birth- 
day, which his friends had come habitually to celebrate 
by a banquet where in the warmth of the great communal 
Individuality they arranged themselves, believing they felt 
a fresh breath of victory, charged with the promise of the fu- 
ture. They were young men most of them who sat round the 
table this year, spread in rooms of the Zeisser restaurant. 
The event of the evening was the improvised speech of 
Robert Ingersoll, come on purpose from New York, his day 
in the law court finished, and who, facing the poet, spoke 
marvellously for three quarters of an hour directly at him 
finishing each period by these words "I thank you for that." 
Walt passionately listened; his friend was superb and "never 
was he so proud, so fully justified as on that evening.' ' 
However Ingersoll forgot, in the warmth of his materialist 
conviction, to mention a very little thing perhaps not at 
first glance discoverable in Leaves of Grass, but which for 
him the architect was the invisible substructure of the edifice. 
It is the faith in the survival of human personality. Inger- 
soll replied, developing the reason of his attitude, and a 
dialogue followed in which the poet and the free thinker 
expressed their views touching on immortality; neither con- 
vinced the other. Walt remained with his instinct, and his 
friend with his logic; but the hour was one of Platonic 
beauty and every guest kept an undying memory of it. 
The real victory of Ingersoll was to draw into controversy, 
by the power of his word, him who never argued. 

In the group of generous companions of this last period 
the orator of this evening soon came to be enrolled with 



336 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

much distinction. In October of the same year, before two 
thousand people in Horticulture Hall of Philadelphia, 
"Colonel Bob" lectured on Liberty and Literature, subject 
urged by a presentation of the work of Walt Whitman. 
Ingersoll did not hesitate to place his great popularity at the 
service of his friend, who not only gathered the moral benefit 
of the lecture, but the receipts also. In pleading the great 
cause of the poet, the lawyer was bold and combative, with 
slight professional tendency to declamation and effect: the 
best of his lecture was probably the citations interlarding it. 
Walt, in listening, experienced a deep joy and pride to be thus 
defended by a man so different from himself. That his book 
had been able to win the enthusiastic support of persons as 
different as O'Connor, Burroughs, Bucke, Anne Gilchrist, 
Sarrazin, Ingersoll — did not that prove it had a universal 
appeal? WTien Ingersoll had finished his plea Walt, who 
sat on the stage near his champion, rose and spoke these 
words to the public: 

"After all, my friends, the main factors being the curious 
testimony called personal presence and face to face meeting, 
I have come here to be among you and show myself, and 
thank you with my living voice for coming, and Robert 
Ingersoll for speaking. And so with such brief testimony of 
showing myself, and such good will and gratitude, I bid you 
hail and farewell. "* 

Perhaps he had the presentiment of saying the last good- 
bye; it was his last appearance in public. There was a par- 
ticular gravity in these words in which he gave his own pres- 
ence as the supreme justification of the work his friend came 
to exalt; he wished to show once more before departing the 
surprising identity of himself and his book — of his book of 
which he delivered the key to those who would understand. 

One day in July of the same year Walt received a visit 
from a young Scotch doctor, who told him that in the in- 
dustrial city of Lancashire, not far from Manchester, was a 

TOucke: hi Be Walt Whitman, p. 253. 



\ 



HOUR OE APOTHEOSIS 337 

« 

group of young men for whom Leaves of Grass was as the 
Bible; he himself was one of them, and he came to bring the 
homage of his comrades. The following year another of 
the circle, J. W. Wallace, crossed the Atlantic in his turn for 
the same purpose. Doctor Johnston, as so many other 
visitors before him, was unforgettably moved before the grand 
old man, who received him royally; and in recounting his 
visits no other written testimony surpasses in vigour and 
closeness the portrait which he drew of him. Walt at 
seventy-one relives in it so vividly that we imagine ourselves 
in the little home in Mickle Street and we feel the warmth of 
a ruling presence. 1 Thus erect in his great chair, his forehead 
high and clear, Walt Whitman remained, battling decay. 
His chest and face were not more bent than his great affir- 
mations were weakened under the weight of age and illness. 
He was inaccessible to remorse, to disenchantment, and to 
doubt; he confronted the approach of death without waver- 
ing or recoil. At seventy-one he was the same Bohemian 
Walt, intransigent, free from prejudices as when he gapingly 
strode along the streets of Brooklyn. He knew how to 
protect himself from all compromises and all subjections. 
He had avoided marriage though he firmly believed in it; 
when Doctor Bucke asked him why he remained a bachelor, 
he said he had no set purpose in it except, "an overmastering 
passion for freedom, unconstraint." To his most intimate 
companion of these last years, the irreconcilable individualist 
gave but one advice: "never ask advice of any one." 

Eighteen years of pain and the most distressing situations 
did not affect his imperturbability. When in 1885 he learned 
of the death of Anne Gilchrist, he did not flinch, he did not 
utter a syllable. In a mood of peace and triumph he wrote 
to her son Herbert: "There now remains but a rich and 
sweet memory — nothing more beautiful, in all time, in all 
life, on all the earth. ... I can not write anything like a 
letter today, I must sit alone and think." And when, four 

V *J. Johnston: A Visit to Walt Whitman, pp. 131-217. 



338 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

years later, his dear friend, O'Connor, died, nothing in his 
manner would have led a stranger to suspect his infinite sor- 
row. "For some minutes he said nothing," Donaldson 
wrote, "to any one near him when the news came — and re- 
mained seated in his corner, his head bowed down. When 
he raised it, his eyes, usually dull and colourless, had a distant 
look and he remained a moment without speaking. After 
an instant in a deep voice he uttered these words: 'And 
what a friend.'" As if he had already experienced the 
eternal metamorphosis, he seemed at times, above his bodily 
decay, to grow immensely, to expand, to widen to his plane- 
tary proportions. And indeed he loved to compare himself, 
in his accumulated impotence, to "an old shell fish cast up 
high and dry on the shore sands, helpless to move any- 
where." One thinks rather of some Creator in the midst 
of a chaos of papers watchful of the good order of the world, 
and knowing the fair and just laws of the world as they fil- 
ter into his soul. 

In his old days, and especially when he wore his broad- 
brimmed hat, Walt with his face deeply wrinkled and with still 
some pinkish brightness reminded one of the old Quakers. 
Though he was essentially earthy and his fortitude free from 
all austere rigour, there was a survival in him of his paternal 
race. It was not without cause that in November Boughs he 
paid tribute to the great Quaker preacher Elias Hicks, and 
that for a long time he replaced in his poems the regular name 
of the months with their number, according to the custom of 
the Friends. But the influence of the maternal line, the 
reserve of tenderness of optimism and of joviality which he re- 
ceived from Holland, was always there to prevent that inflex- 
ible Quaker from degenerating into sulky hardness and dryness 
either in his looks or in his attitude toward life. He wrote in 
1890 to a friend: "Are you not a little blue? — it's no use — 
one has to obey orders and do duty and face the music till he 
gets dismissal and may as well come up to scratch smiling." 1 

l W. S. Kennedy: Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, p. 65. 



HOUR OF APOTHEOSIS 339 

In the middle of April, 1892, Walt propelled in his wheel 
chair, breathed the outside air after four months of im- 
prisonment. The beginning of that year was full of sinister 
forecasts. The end was indeed not far. Darkness little by 
little weighed upon his sight, and soon he would be half 
blind. According to an expression which he borrowed from 
Epictetus he was but "a tiny ray of soul awkwardly drag- 
ging here and there a great lubber of a dead body"; and 
the image seemed to him so adequate to his present situa- 
tion that he had it printed at the head of the paper on which 
he wrote his last notes to his friends. 

His nurse used to conduct the old man toward the banks of 
the river to study the magic of space, and to give his face to 
the caress of the breeze. "I saw a great schooner with four 
sails the finest I ever saw, poised on the water like a duck. 
That, I truly think is a poem, a poem," he said after one of 
these outings. That living poem, a great sail boat moving 
upon the water, he declared he was unable to describe, as he 
had the locomotive. The shipping quay was one of his 
favourite haunts at the twilight hour, when the freshness of 
the banks kept him within city bounds; he watched the boys 
play baseball, he breathed the air of the fields. He still 
thirsted for the great shows of the out-of-doors and a setting 
sun filled him with the same great and solemn joy as the 
show of the world awakened in the first man. Amid the 
planks and boxes of the Camden wharf his great body was 
shaken by the movement of the chair, but the head high, 
the great liver recalled by the earth, came to see the sun go 
down, and seeing them face to face, it might well be believed 
that the same royal apotheosis enveloped the disappearance 
of both. And the man reflected that obeying the same 
rhythm as the planets he would be born again like them, 
shining in youth at the day appointed by eternal laws. And 
while the delicious breeze of twilight refreshed his wrinkled 
face, an echo of a stanza he sang seemed to pass into the 
air: 



340 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

You earth and life till the last ray gleams I sing, 
Open mouth of my soul uttering gladness, 
Eyes of my soul seeing perfection, 
Natural life of me faithfully praising things, 
Corroborating forever the triumph of things. 



setting sun ! though the time has come, 

1 still warble under you, if none else does, unmitigated admiratio r 

Since it had been imprudent to take Walt far from his 
home, his friends rather than give up the celebrating of his 
seventy-second birthday planned a makeshift. This time 
they would come to Mickle Street to break the fervent, 
faithful bread of affection: the parlour of the little house was 
not large, but it would do to gather around the great Com- 
rade. The precaution was wise, for the evening of May 31st 
Walt had to be carried to the table where thirty of his friends 
were guests. He spoke these words: "After welcoming 
you deeply and specifically to my board, dear friends, it 
seems to me I feel first to say a word for the mighty com- 
rades that have not long ago passed away — Bryant, Emer- 
son, Longfellow; and I drink a reverent honour and memory 
to them. And I feel to add a word to Whittier, who is living 
among us — a noble old man; and another word to the boss 
of us all — Tennyson, who is also with us yet. I take this 
occasion to drink my reverence for those who have passed, 
and compliments for the two great masters left and all that 
they stand for and represent." 

A perfume of intimacy and of joyous confidence filled the 
little room, predisposing the poet to avowals which all felt 
to be the last. At times one would have believed himself 
back at the symposiums of Greece, and when Walt with his 
slow, musical, selective speech made a remark, confessed his 
faith or explained anew the meaning of his book, one could 
not but think of Socrates exercising his power among a 



leaves of Grass, pp. 374-376. 



HOUR OF APOTHEOSIS 341 

group of his disciples. He, invigorated by so many affection- 
ate presences on this solemn sweet evening, spoke with vim 
and before leaving for his room thus said his farewell : " The 
chief thing is that we are here, that we are happy, and that 
we have a good time. I salute all of you — I send my love to 
each one of you — and to many, many others who are not 
here." 1 There were for the guests unforgettable blessed 
moments during this simple celebration, illuminated as it 
was by an Olympian presence. From that time, this pres- 
ence would be missing at the anniversary banquets; before 
the return of May 31st the friends were called again for an- 
other celebration infinitely greater. 

A word of congratulation from James Russell Lowell, born 
the same year as the poet, sent on their seventy-second birthday 
might be considered a sign of the times. Two months later 
Lowell died, and the poet sent to the Boston Herald a line 
of homage to the memory of him who had "faithfully 
worked," "according to the light of his own convictions." 

What great names Walt left on his way! . . . 
Lowell, the last of a great group — Bryant, Longfellow, 
Emerson — and WTiittier to survive him but six months. A 
great era of American literature was closed. 

Before being felled by a last storm, the old tree gave once 
more its fruit. It was not without fear of repeating him- 
self and in confessing that he had perhaps better keep silent 
that he put out, at this anniversary, a collection of verse and 
prose, in which to the notes and memories, he added a dozen 
or so of short poems, proofs of creative hours which he knew 
in the course of the last three years. The title of the col- 
lection, Good-Bye, My Fancy, was a true one; he himself felt 
that it was finished, that the sap would not rise again in the 
obstructed veins. But since a slight stream rose from the 
depths, he would receive and present it. Thanks to Horace 
Traubel, who the same month published in the New Eng- 
land Magazine moving, filial, and wonderfully searching 

iBucke: In Re Walt Whitman, pp. 2!)7-f3 l 27, 



342 WALT WHITMAN—THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

pages on Walt with whom he daily associated for years, he 
was able to conduct this new and last enterprise. 

After surmounting three-score and ten, 

With all their chances, changes, losses, sorrows, 

My parents' deaths, the vagaries of my life, the many tearing passions of 

me, the War of '63 and '4, 
As some old broken soldier, after a long, hot, wearying march, or haply 

after battle, 
To-day at twilight, hobbling, answering company roll-call. Here, with vital 

voice, 
Reporting yet, saluting yet the Officer over all. 1 

Nothing further remained but to add these last measures to 
the symphony of Leaves of Grass, and this final work the poet 
already undertook to complete in the last moments of res- 
pite left him. After that the work forever fixed was to go 
among men, to follow its destiny. 

For many years the old man lovingly entertained the 
project of acquiring a home in some part of the forest. 
The time came to realize this wish. Walt would not 
wait longer. In 1890, Christmas day, he was taken out- 
side Camden, to a new burying ground, where he chose 
the site of a tomb which he wished built. "I am not to 
die this moment," he said that evening to a friend, "I am 
but preparing the house needed for my old body." The 
site was delightful, at the incline of a hill, facing the sun, 
shaded with great trees: as he had always worshipped trees 
and sun, this was fitting. At last he would sleep the 
splendid sleep, near his own people, at least his father and 
his mother: for it was his intention to gather his whole 
family here, those dead and yet to die. In waiting, he was 
busy in having built the tomb and simple but durable monu- 
ment which he planned : the work would take a good part of 
the savings of the poet, but Walt could once more in his life 



iLeawof Grass, p. 410. 



HOUR OF APOTHEOSIS 343 

prove himself a wonder. In May of the following year he 
visited the cemetery to take note of the work and returned 
satisfied. The house was prepared for the day when its 
occupant would come accompanied by his friends to take 
possession of the woody retreat under the trees. 



XXXI 
THE DELIVERANCE 

On December 17, 1891, the old man was seized with a 
hard chill in the afternoon, took to his bed, and the next day 
the diagnosis proved that he had acute bronchial pneumonia. 
The final scene of the tragedy which lasted for twenty years 
was begun. Walt did not leave his bed except for his new 
home. Then the last complication set in. His friends were 
informed that all would soon be over. Walt was completely 
conscious of his condition; he did not lose an atom of his 
coolness and his quietude. On the 21st it seemed that the 
last hour was approaching, but a drink of milk gave him 
again a semblance of vitality. The sick man now wished 
to be left alone with the nurse. After three or four days all 
were apprehensive; the dying man was plunged into a kind 
of half -consciousness. Now he declared for the first time 
that the end seemed near. Doctor Bucke who had hastily 
come at the news of danger was also sure of this. It was 
evident that Walt at the end of his strength was sinking, 
and his most tender friend could do nothing to hold him 
back. . . . Medical aid was put to the utmost. Walt 
asked nothing but that he might go, begged gentle death, 
so belated in coming, implored her to put an end to his long 
suffering. His sweetness and gentleness never left him. 

John Burroughs came, and remained ten days, watching 
for a last time the living features of his old companion, and 
in finding him as beautiful as ever, more splendid than he 
had ever been at the time of his glorious power with that 
expression of the unconquerable fighter in his face, could 
scarcely realize that he saw him on his death bed. On 
January 2nd the great patient had strength to sign a codicil 

344 



THE DELIVERANCE 345 

to his will. The only complaint of Walt was that in these 
moments of intense suffering when he had not the strength 
to turn his head, he remained sound and was assailed by a 
flood of thought. Why did not death come to free the 
strong and clear spirit which persisted in a lamentable 
human ruin. . . . 

The issue, however certain, was now averted to some un- 
known chance. The glorious human edifice was still to 
last three months. Walt had to submit. No one heard 
complaints during these weeks of survival harassed by cough, 
by pain in the side, by restless nights. The tortured man 
needed to be alone; he preferred his watchers in the next 
room rather than at his bedside. He still for some moments 
partook of the life of the world for he still asked for his news- 
papers and his mail; he still had words of tenderness for his 
distant friends, Stedman, Ingersoll. His old friend J. H 
Johnston of New York came to see him. His pen was at 
hand and from time to time he painfully traced two or three 
lines to Doctor Bucke or to his sister Hannah. There were 
long silences, and it was plain that he suffered intensely 
and uninterruptedly. Walt had at least a supreme joy 
before departing. The final edition of his books, the tenth, 
which contained as an annex Good-Bye, My Fancy, was com- 
pleted, and he could hold in his hands the work forever 
finished, such as he would leave to the world with his last 
corrections. The volume (published by McKay) contained 
411 pieces — ten or twelve thousand verses — making up the 
poetic total of his life. Walt wished that the first hundred 
copies, bound in heavy gray paper with the title in yellow, 
should be sent to his friends in gratitude for their affectionate 
support, unfortunately without the dedication or signature 
which his nerveless hand was unable to affix. In February, 
wishing to show that his heart was always with them, he 
wrote with trembling hand a collective letter, which was 
reproduced in facsimile and sent by Horace Traubel to all 
of Walt's correspondents in Europe and America. 



346 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

This is his very last word, before all the cares of the 
world had submerged him, to send this farewell kiss to all 
those who supported the cause of Leaves of Grass: "February 
6, 1892. I must send you all, dear friends a word from 
my hand — I am propped up in bed with pillows, deathly 
weak still, but the spark seems to burn bright always. . . . 
My health is not so bad as you might think, though my 
suffering the most of the time is intense. Again I repeat 
my thanks to you, friends in England, with all my heart, 
it is perhaps the last — in reaching you my right hand." 
And in a postscript he wrote this testamentary and prophetic 
thought — the last important word traced by his hand: 
"More and more it is seen to be true that the only theory 
worthy of modern times in view of a great literature, politics 
and sociology should combine all the best men of all the 
countries, not forgetting the women." To this letter was 
added a prospectus announcing the completed edition of his 
poems, the only one he wished to carry his name to the future. 
Later David McKay brought out the volume also complete, 
of his prose works, in the same form as Leaves of Grass. And 
the world then would possess all of Walt Whitman condensed 
in two volumes. One must thank fate that despite the suffer- 
ing of these last hours he was able to put the final period to 
his work, which left his dying bed in perfect order, without 
uncertainty or gap, such as he wished to leave to eternity 
or to oblivion. 

At the same time that he left to mankind his great Testa- 
ment, Walt was careful to make known his last will to assure 
the integrity of his work, and the distribution of his temporal 
goods. He had made one will in 1888; the old was to be 
replaced by that of 1891, completed by a codicil which named 
as testamentary literary executors Maurice Bucke, Thomas 
Harned, and Horace Traubel. Then his all being disposed 
of Walt could leave with light and joyous heart. He had 
closed his accounts and found himself correct with himself 
and everyone. 



THE DELIVERANCE 347 

And now, after so many delays, the inevitable hour was 
come. The fifteen days which the liberatrix needed to 
destroy his massive figure Walt passed in almost absolute 
silence, more tragic than the sighs which were evidence of 
his interminable dissolution. He wished to be alone; the 
great fighter was now intrenched within his interior fortress. 
Who would have thought that so much dregs still remained 
in the cup for his last moments! Death seemed to wish 
him to be gorged in it in proportion as he was filled with 
life. Walt knew death by long draughts during the weeks 
which were as centuries. It appeared, as well as life, to be 
for him multitudinary. "You would weep," wrote Traubel 
to Doctor Bucke, "if you were at his bedside, and saw this 
struggle and this heroism." There was something great in 
that forbearance, these victorious suffering hours which 
changed the sadness of his friends into a kind of joy, as before 
an exultant apotheosis. The grim ruler whose features he 
came closely to see was to him without terror, he had met 
death before when he lavished his care on soldiers; the hor- 
ror of the last hours were a vain chimera. For he remained 
fully, entirely conscious; had had neither delirium nor coma. 
On May 17th the pen between his fingers was still able to 
trace these trembling and almost illegible lines to his sister in 
Vermont: "Unable to write more — here is five dollars — re- 
ceived your nice letter — God Bless you. W. W. " And after 
that effort, the hand which traced so many verses for the 
future ceased forever its writing. 

In the afternoon of the 26th, at half-past four, the signs 
of release were evident. Then Horace Traubel came in and 
Walt gave him his hand which his disciple held in his own, 
above the counterpane; the end came simply, peacefully, 
without spasms, without fright, without motion of the body. 
The dying man, who appeared not to be suffering, retained 
full consciousness. When the nurse changed his position 
he rolled his eyes an instant as if to thank him by a faint 
smile, the last service given him in this world, then remained 



348 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

lying very calmly, while his breath insensibly shortened. 
And like a breeze which passes or a petal which softly loosens 
and falls, the end came with the decline of day: it came so 
gently that no one knew at what moment the transition was 
made. In the last crisis, no words of pathetic adieu ; the great 
liver went with the same ease, the same naturalness that he 
lived toward the beyond so often speculated upon in his 
serene meditation, to the kingdom of shade or light, none 
knows, but surely of royal repose. The shadow of a smile of 
content at gratitude to the nurse passed over his calm, 
wasted features, then later his hand fumbled as if searching 
for something and he was by invisible stages swallowed in the 
great All. 

At the last, tenderly, 

From the walls of the powerful fortress' d house, 

From the clasp of the knitted locks, from the keep of the 

well-closed doors, 
Let me be wafted. 
Let me glide noiselessly forth; 

With the key of softness unlock the locks — with a whisper, 
Set ope the doors, O Soul. 
Tenderly — be not impatient, 
(Strong is your hold O mortal flesh, 
Strong is your hold, O love. 1 ) 

And now, evening was come and while rain gently fell, 
Walt remained dying in his room, his face in full repose. 
This time the great oak whose branches once swayed so 
gaily in the wind, peopled by singing birds, after the suc- 
cessive lightning strokes which broke its branches was 
brought to earth gently, lifted by its roots to the level of the 
soil; and lying there the king of the forest appeared still 
greater than when it was upright. 

^Leaves of Grass, p. 346. 



XXXII 
A PAGAN FUNERAL 

There remained the last rite, the burial of him who so confi- 
dently faced the end of the journey. To be worthy of Walt 
the ceremony must be one with the big simplicity of the man, 
and it was: never a funeral of the purer impress of humanity, 
cf nature and of heroism, rounded the life of one of earth's 
immortals. On March 30th, at eleven o'clock, in the sitting 
room of the little house on Mickle Street, the body of Walt 
Whitman in an oak coffin strewn with flowers was half ex- 
posed that all might see the legendary figure which had for 
so long appeared to passersby framed by the open window 
or erect in the buggy and the wheel chair. Clad in the un- 
changing gray flannel with his broad shirt collar open, and 
his white cuffs turned back, the poet whose features death 
left unchanged looked ready to leave for his new home, his 
face as natural as on the day he allotted his burial. 

Near the body resting among palms, sheafs, and crowns 
sat his brother, George Whitman, and for three hours a cease- 
less procession crowded the narrow door and about the coffin; 
they were the crowd which came to salute a last time him who 
was so vividly nourished by them, the multitude of friends 
known and unknown, the unknown especially. All the 
elements of the community were represented in these 
thousands of visitors, men of the people and of workers en 
masse, artists elbowing policemen, scholars mingling with 
school children, doctors, ministers, lawyers, all curiously one 
in the same desire to look at the admirable countenance so 
serene in the bond of death. In one last "meeting face to 
face" as he loved them in life Walt offered again to the crowd 
the radiant enigma of that physiognomy in which nature 

349 



350 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

placed the most absolute sign of the triumph of the race. 
John Burroughs who came from his farm to be near his 
dear old-time Comrade was more than ever struck with the 
perfect symmetry of the dead face so like the superhuman 
image of Zeus. Robert Ingersoll threw a quick glance at the 
coffin and turned away; Moncure Conway, in his turn, mur- 
mured these words: "How Rembrandt would have liked to 
have painted this face." 1 And in looking back at the strange 
man whom he came to find one summer day thirty-seven 
years ago in the suburb of Brooklyn, he said a little later: 
"I do not believe that Buddha, of whom he appeared an 
avatar, was more gentle to all men, women, children, and liv- 
ing things." 2 

At two o'clock, the hour for removing the body, the crowd 
continued to press about the door yard, as if the procession 
would last till evening, and access to the house would have 
to be forbidden. The old head, tenderly kissed by George 
Whitman, disappeared under the lid, and Walt with his 
family crossed the threshold of the little house he had en- 
tered eight years before. A magnificent guard of honour es- 
corted him on his last ride: 3 that is to say the elite of his 
American companions and admirers, new friends and old 
ones, whose presence was most clearly the answer to the call 
of the man tormented by an incessant need of love. Out- 
side a dense crowd which since morning had not ceased to 
grow blocked the house. And in the town, from the ferry 
to the cemetery, was a great crowd of people, come from 
their shops and their homes, to be at the burial of the great 
man of Camden. There was no sadness either of face or 



1 Donaldson: Walt Whitman the Man, p. 271. 

2 John Burroughs: Walt Whitman, p. 55. 

3 Immediately before the funeral car holding the coffin J. H. Stoddard, Julius Chambers, George W. 
Childs, Julian Hawthorne, Robert Ingersoll, Horace Furness, Daniel Brinton, John Burroughs, 
Lincoln Eyre, J. H. Johnston, Francis H. Williams, R. M. Bucke, Talcott Williams, Thomas Harned, 
Horace Traubel, Charles Garrison, Harry Bonsall, J. H. Clifford, Harrison Morris, Richard W. Gilder, 
H. D. Buch, Thomas Eakin, A. G. Cattell, Edmund Clarence Stedman, David McKay, Thomas Don- 
aldson. Donaldson: Walt Whitman the Man, p. 272. 



A PAGAN FUNERAL 351 

atmosphere. Along the streets pedlers arranged their 
stands or exhibited their baskets of fruits and sweets; the 
funeral of the great joyous liver suited marvellously his 
character, taking on the appearance of a fair. Would not 
Walt have been delighted thus to leave in the midst of a 
popular fete! Perhaps he would have found few in this 
crowd who could have called by name Leaves of Grass or ex- 
plained who the man was who was being buried, but little 
mattered this ignorance. What was precious and touching 
was this collective evidence which without knowing it the 
average man bore to him who sprang from the people and 
kept them in his own heart. The same crowd continued 
throughout the entire way to the cemetery, and the friends 
of the dead man, in seeing all the silent faces watching the 
bard of Democracy pass, thought: "How fit, how touching 
all this is, how well it would please him." 1 

The procession reached the gate of Harleigh Cemetery, and 
moved toward a large tent decorated with palms, in which 
was a raised platform: the grave was some rods from the 
tent. The bearers laid the casket before the platform on 
which Thomas Harned, Daniel Brinton, John Burroughs, 
Francis H. Williams, Robert Ingersoll, and Maurice Bucke 
were seated. No show of sorrow, no funeral march; the 
preparation suggested rather a holiday. It was an ideally 
soft, fair day, sweet with the breath of early spring as though 
nature was tender to the man of tender heart and smiling 
to him whose smile was so luminous. The crowd filled the 
cemetery and alongside the hedge onlookers reached the very 
entrance of the grave. On every side, on the slopes near the 
open grave, a sea of attentive faces, an innumerable multi- 
tude reminded one of the crowds in the amphitheatre watch- 
ing a Greek play. All these people had not quit their work 
moved by curiosity to hear Ingersoll or to be present at a new 
and strange ceremony; it must have been that they were 



»Bucke: In Re Walt Whitman, p. 303. 



352 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

forced out of their daily routine by some hidden impulse, per- 
haps by the vague, inexplicable feeling that the man whose 
white hair they had reverenced belonged to them more than 
to any one, relatives or disciples, and that they were his true 
family. On the slope, part of the swarming crowd, a man 
of forty years steadily watched the tent where the coffin 
rested, without appearing to understand more than those 
near him what these preparations meant. But what he did 
understand, what he felt rather, was the immense void in 
his heart at the sight of the coffin where lay the man who 
loved him more than a son, and who had so profoundly loved 
and understood him with his simple and true heart. And in 
the heart of Peter Doyle, the former conductor, separated 
from his great companion for life, the past infinitely 
throbbed. 1 

Then before the assembled multitude one of the friends on 
the platform, Francis H. Williams, arose and said: "These 
are the words of Walt Whitman." Then he read one of the 
stanzas in which the poet exalted blessed death, dispenser of 
supreme joys: 

Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet, 

Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome? 

Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all, 

I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly. 

From me to thee glad serenades, 

Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings for 
thee. . . . 2 

Then one by one the others rose to testify, in words of grave 
simplicity each according to his character and belief, what 
they themselves, the world, and the future owed eternally to 
the man asleep in the coffin. Though their voices trembled 
with emotion they had not come to the grave to lament, but 



m. B. Binns: Life of Walt Whitman, pp. 344-345. 
^Leaves of Grass, p. 260. 



A PAGAN FUNERAL 353 

rather to affirm their exultant joy that such a man had lived 
among them. When all had spoken Francis H. Williams 
rose again to read one of the sentences chosen from among 
the great religious books and prophecies composing the Bible 
of Humanity: "These are the words of Confucius, of 
Gautama le Bouddha, of Jesus Christ, of the Koran, of 
Isaiah, of John, of Zend Avesta, of Plato. . . ." 

And when the last friend had spoken and the last sentence 
was pronounced, the extraordinary ceremony was finished. 
That was all, and that was great, simple, and natural and per- 
haps shall one day be the funeral of man as one coming closer 
from himself and from the truth of life. The consecration 
of the dead by the words of great genuises and of his friends 
was his liturgy, and more than the thundering notes of 
Siegfried's funeral march the aerial melody of that day of 
apotheosis stirred the heart. A feeling of triumph height- 
ened the emotion of the friends surrounding the body while the 
motionless crowd on the hillside, too remote to hear, waited 
patiently the moment when the remains of the poet disap- 
peared under the vault, as if in recollected expectancy of some 
marvel. It was Robert Ingersoll who said the farewell words. 
Wlien he exalted with a voice whose usual power was weak- 
ened by emotion him who had sung, "the great and splendid 
psalm of life," and ended with this solemn thought: "To- 
day we give back to Mother Nature, to her embrace and kiss, 
one of the bravest, most tender souls which ever dwelt in 
human clay," a great silence rested on the whole assembly, 
on all the hearts touched by an unspeakable moment, as if 
the soul of the dead were diffused into nature and the crowd ; 
and before that bier, under the swaying, new-budding trees, 
symbol of the eternal regeneration, some thought they saw 
the day when the poems of the sage, left to time, would 
blossom anew through all the earth like the grass of the hill — 
they thought they heard the thrill in the odorous air charged 
with promise, the great salutation of the future before 
this grave. 



354 WALT WHITMAN— THE MAN AND HIS WORK 

The bearers again lifted their burden; the procession now 
moved toward the vault, along the crowded path. It was 
built on a shady slope, of three blocks of granite of an Etrus- 
can simplicity, bearing as the inscription these three syllables 
which the future will have deathlessiy engraved on human 
hearts before they are rubbed from the stone: WALT 
WHITMAN. All about an abundance of verdure, grass, 
wild plants, tufted branches, impetuous spreading of free 
vegetal life; young trees seemed attentively guarding the 
door of the house where he was about to rest in whose veins 
had run the same life substance which made them grow on 
this slope. The crowd was in double rows on both sides of 
the tomb and the coffin was carried between them and 
placed in the grave. Not a word was uttered while the coffin 
was lowered, but the moment Walt was within his house a 
little messenger of spring, perched on the tree shading it, 
gave out some trembling notes, then smothered his clear and 
exquisite melody. It was the wood which by the voice of 
its choristers seemed to welcome the new guest who came to 
sleep there. And now all was finished; the friends remained 
there a moment bent in mute emotion. All of them knew 
that they lived an ineffaceable hour of their life and time. 
And the crowd, held in spite of itself, lingered near the tomb 
of the divine old man about to be left to the silent freshness 
of the night. 1 

Walt was there where he should be. That wonderful 
physique retaken by the elements would be part of the 
earth which he had trod with firm step in loving it, of the air 
which had joyously filled his strong man's lungs, with the 
flowers, with the grass, with the herbs — gifts to him of 
so many joyous miracles. Truly the earth reclaimed her 
own. He belonged to it entire to the minutest cell. Yes, 
the earth hungrily reclaimed all of him. . . . And yet 
the man, who by a miracle of love, was transmuted into a 



JBucke: In Re Walt Whitman, pp. 437-452; Kennedy: Reminiscences of Walt Whitman, p. 47; Donald- 
son: Walt Whitman the Man, pp. 272-275. 



A PAGAN FUNERAL 355 

Book, remains triumphantly beyond the reach of glebe, and 
wind and water, eluding tender death which soothed at last 
his long suffering, continues to haunt the hearts of men, in- 
dissoluble, everlasting. In going, Walt Whitman left us his 
"double." 



THE END 




THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 



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